SN Power Prince to Avoid Chile Fish Farms Upon Advisement of the Chilean Government - Hydro-electric Visit Still On

Haakon 'safe,' but drops controversial fish-farm visit

An official royal visit to Chile has been trimmed once again, with Crown Prince Haakon dropping a long-planned visit to a Norwegian-controlled fish-farming operation because of labour and security trouble. Palace officials insist the crown prince is in no danger, though.

Chilean authorities advised the crown prince against going ahead with a visit to fish-farming facilities run by AKVA Group and Marine Harvest in Puerto Montt. Norway's ambassador to Chile, Pål Moe, told reporters the visit was cancelled because of an ongoing labour conflict at both plants.

No threats were lodged against the crown prince, and Chile's protocol chief Antonia Pena said "it's not dangerous for him to travel to Puerto Montt." Rather, the Chilean authorities issued a press statement that they didn’t want such a high-ranking person as the crown prince to visit places hit by such a conflict.

"It's too bad the visit can't be made, but I'll follow the advice the Chilean authorities give," Crown Prince Haakon said.

(But not the advice of the Mapuche: Mapuche Protest against Norwegian Hydroelectric Power )

Troubled trip

Environmentalists and critics of salmon farming had called for Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit to cancel their entire trip to Chile. They claimed that Norwegian-backed fish-farming operations in Chile exploit local workers and threaten wild salmon in the area.

(See: Chile's Flourishing Fish Farms Prompt Fears for Ecosystem )

Others have protested the royal visit because native groups in southern Chile are upset over plans by a Norwegian-owned firm, SN Power, to build a power plant in their area. A royal visit, they argue, would seem to condone the controversial plans.

Mette-Marit ended up staying home, after palace officials said she'd developed an acute case of stomach flu. Haakon traveled alone to Santiago, arriving Wednesday, and said he felt it was "right" to make the trip because of important ties between the countries.

Disappointed

Marine Harvest’s chief executive, meanwhile, claimed there was no conflict at his firm that warranted Thursday's cancellation. "We are very disappointed and don't understand this," said Leif Frode Onarheim. "At the same time, we respect the authorities' decision."

He thinks a workers' occupation at AKVA Chile may have prompted the cancellation, and that authorities fear the same could occur at other plants. AKVA Chile officials couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

Representatives of Norway's trade unions' congress, LO, had visited fish-farming operations in Chile last fall, and called for improvements in working conditions and terms. Marine Harvest is the world's largest fish-farming firm, while AKVA Group supplies equipment to the industry.

Another controversial visit carried out

Crown Prince Haakon went ahead with the visit to SN Power. "I'm convinced that SN Power is in a good dialogue with the local population, the Mapuche folk,"

(See: SN Power representatives have been only arrogant and unyielding to local concerns up until now. )

Crown Prince Haakon said. "I have worked with native peoples and their challenges through my engagement in the UN. I’m well aware of the issues."

(This sounds positive: Chile Terror Law Violates Due Process for Mapuche)

SN Power was formed in 2002 by Norwegian state-owned power agency Statkraft and Norfund to construct export ($$$ to exploit) Norway's hydro-electric expertise overseas.

(See: Power for the Mapuches but not for Uganda- Norwegian Government owner, SN Power, pulls out of Uganda hydroelectric venture citing economic unviability )

The Mapuche people fear their lands will be damaged and their livelihoods threatened by a hydro-electric plant.

The crown prince said it was essential that the local population be included in all planning and that their concerns be heard (but not heeded) . He said he was relying on SN Power's management (instead of checking the facts for himself) that they're doing so.

Here is the full article.

Leading Norwegian environmental group demands royal couple drop official trip to Chile on "ethical grounds".

One of Norway's leading environmental groups wants Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit to cancel their official trip to Chile next week, on "ethical grounds."

Officials of Norges Miljøvernforbund have sent an open letter to the Royal Palace, with copies to Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, the president of the Norwegian Parliament Thorbjørn Jagland and the government minister in charge of business and industry, Dag Terje Andersen.

The group is unhappy that the royal couple will visit, and therefore seem to support, Norwegian businesses active in Chile that Norges Miljøvernforbund claims are environmentally unfriendly.

(Al Gore faced similar problems on his visit: Al Gore Dumps Barrick Gold Sponsorship for Chile Visit - Mining sponsorship risked "contaminating" and making a mockery of Gore's campaign. )

The group specifically opposes the royals' planned visits to fish farming businesses. Kurt Oddekalv of Miljøvernforbund claims that salmon farming in Chile "hits ecosystems hard" in areas where "local fishermen are seeing their livelihoods destroyed by Norwegian capitalist interests."

(See: Chile's Flourishing Fish Farms Prompt Fears for Ecosystem )

Oddekalv demanded in his letter that the royals abide by their own ethical and environmental platforms and cancel the visit.

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit are due to be in Chile for three days. Visits to facilities run by Marine Harvest and SN Power are on their official agenda. The latter company has provoked anger among the native population in southern Chile who fear a new hydroelectric power plant will ruin their lifestyles.

(See: Mapuche Protest against Norwegian Hydroelectric Power , Norwegian Power Projects in Mapuche, Chile Heartland Plunder Environment )

Norges Miljøvernforbund, also known as Green Warriors of Norway, describes itself as an idealistic environmental organization, founded in May 1993 and headquartered in Bergen.

Here is the full article.

SN Power's (Statkraft Norfund) Norwegian Royal Couple Prepared to Face Critics in Chile

Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette-Marit and some top Norwegian officials will likely need to deal with some critics when they visit a few controversial Norwegian-controlled businesses in Chile next week.

The royal couple's official visit to Chile is meant, in part, to highlight and drum up new business ties between Chile and Norway. The local population, however, isn't altogether happy with at least two of the businesses already there.

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit are due to visit, for example, Marine Harvest. It's the world's largest seafood producer, controlled by Norwegian tycoon John Fredriksen, but it's been under attack by labour leaders both in Chile and Norway.

They claim Marine Harvest maintains poor working conditions for its employees and threatens them against joining labour unions. Norway's trade union congress LO released a critical report this week on both Marine Harvest and another Norwegian seafood producer, Cermaq, that it has forwarded to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.

Marine Harvest has been having problems in Chile and logging losses, not least because of illness among the salmon it farms. Both wild salmon advocates and environmental groups have claimed that Marine Harvest's farming methods aren't environmentally friendly.

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"Norwegian seafood companies come to Chile and do things they'd never get away with at home," said Dave Bard of the National Environmental Trust's Pure Salmon Campaign in Washington.

Stefan Woelfl, a scientist at the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia, has conducted numerous studies of the region's lakes to determine the environmental impacts of salmon farming, which he described as serious.

"But if I find problems in a lake, I don't direct my complaints toward the company -- I direct the complaint to the government," Woelfl said. "The company didn't do anything wrong according to the law. It's the state that is allowing it to happen."

See: Chile's Flourishing Fish Farms Prompt Fears for Ecosystem
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Marine Havest officials have bashed the LO report, calling it "misleading" and full of "undocumented claims." Company spokesman Arne Hjeltnes said Marine Harvest has a "tight dialogue" with its labour organizations, and welcomes cooperation with them (so long as they don't demand improvements?). LO defended the report, saying it was based on many interviews with sources in Chile.

Meanwhile, another company owned by the state is also under fire in southern Chile. SN Power has sparked the anger of native groups over its planned construction of a hydroelectric plant.

(See:

Mapuche Protest against Norwegian Hydroelectric Power

Norwegian Power Projects in Mapuche, Chile Heartland Plunder Environment

SN Power, Norway, & Pacific Hydro, Australia, move on La Confluencia dam project on the Tinguiririca River- effort to reduce Europe's Carbon Emissions

SN Power (Statkraft Norfund) to cancel 600 million dollar hydro-power project after exec. shot at by Mapuche sympathizer in Santiago, Chile )

Company officials and Norway's government minister in charge of business and industry, Dag Terje Andersen, expect to meet criticism when they appear at the companies and participate in a seminar on fish health. It remains uncertain whether they'll also meet formal protests or organized demonstrations.

Here is the full article.

Farmed Pacific salmon invade Atlantic in Chile & Argentina Patagonia - salmon-ranching experiments in the 1980s gone awry.

A study published in a recent issue of the journal Conservation Biology has confirmed that introduced Pacific salmon are successfully invading the Atlantic.

The study by Leandro Becker, Miguel Pascual and Néstor Basso analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of Chinook salmon (Oncorhycnchus tshawytscha), a species native to the northern Pacific (from San Francisco Bay north to the Bering Strait, across the Chukchi Sea to Kamchatka, the Kuriles and Japan), that were caught out of a breeding population in the Santa Cruz River drainage, a river drainage in southern Argentina that drains into the southern Atlantic Ocean.

The authors found that the salmon in the Santa Cruz drainage were descended from fish that were imported from Puget Sound (in Washington) into southern Chile for salmon-ranching experiments in the 1980s (although there were four known unsuccessful attempts to establish Chinook salmon in southern Argentina and adjacent areas dating back to 1906).

The authors conclude that “the Southern Pacific and Atlantic oceans provide...a favorable marine environment for the success of invading salmon. In particular, the water belt around the tip of South America associated with fjords; southern channels, including the Magellan Strait with its direct inflow of diluted waters toward the Atlantic Ocean; and the inshore portion of the Patagonian shelf on the Atlantic, appear to provide a rather bounded waterway for exotic anadromous salmonids, rich in diverse forage species.

Here is the full article.

Chile's Flourishing Fish Farms Prompt Fears for Ecosystem

Salmon Industry's Methods Threaten The Very Purity It Vaunts, Critics Say

PUERTO MONTT, Chile -- Newcomers to Patagonia can't even make it out of the airport here without encountering a stunning view of sparkling Lake Llanquihue, with the snow-peaked cone of Osorno volcano rising in the background.

It's a huge photograph hanging in the terminal, actually, and the buoys pictured floating in the glassy water give away its intent: It's an ad for commercial salmon farming, which has become the economic backbone of Patagonia's lakes region.

The salmon industry barely existed here 20 years ago, but the same crystal waters and unspoiled vistas that help power the region's booming tourist industry caught the attention of seafood producers. Now, when diners in the United States cut into a salmon fillet, odds are that the fish matured in one of the net pens constructed in this region's waters.

Spurred partly by a U.S. appetite for salmon that has quadrupled in the past decade, the massive growth of the local salmon industry now has some fearing that its best marketing tool -- that fabled Patagonian purity -- isn't quite what it used to be.

"The irony is that the same thing that caused the salmon producers to come here in the first place -- the pristine quality of the lakes -- is now being lost because of the production of salmon," said Jorge Le¿n-Mu¿oz, who co-wrote a World Wildlife Fund report detailing some of the industry's effects on the environment.

Using a clear plastic tube to bore into lakebeds, scientists can plainly view the problem. Round pellets -- the fish-based food that is fed to the salmon -- have fallen to the lakebeds unconsumed and ended up buried in the dirt. Those pellets, combined with the salmon's feces, add nutrients to the water that spur plankton growth and deplete oxygen, which can make the water unlivable for many native fish.

"You see species of algae and types of bacteria that weren't there before," said Guiliana Furci, a salmon specialist with Terram, a Santiago-based environmental research institute. "There's a huge organic input in the lakes."

According to official statistics, evidence of oxygen deficiency was found at 20 percent of salmon farms operating on Chile's lakes between 2003 and 2005.

Fishing companies use net pens in the freshwater lakes -- as well as rivers and estuaries -- to raise smolt, or young salmon, before moving them to saltwater facilities to mature. Because some of the salmon get loose from the net pens, their population in the lakes has increased at the expense of native species, most of which are much smaller. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 93 percent of native fish species in the lakes are classified as vulnerable or threatened, and 40 percent are considered endangered.

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"Norwegian seafood companies come to Chile and do things they'd never get away with at home," said Dave Bard of the National Environmental Trust's Pure Salmon Campaign in Washington.

Stefan Woelfl, a scientist at the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia, has conducted numerous studies of the region's lakes to determine the environmental impacts of salmon farming, which he described as serious.

"But if I find problems in a lake, I don't direct my complaints toward the company -- I direct the complaint to the government," Woelfl said. "The company didn't do anything wrong according to the law. It's the state that is allowing it to happen."

Here is the full article.

Small Mapuche community rests all of its hopes on a group of strangers in far-away Washington, DC - Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

[Nov. 22, 2007] Puerto Montt: Fighting for years to preserve the last, tiny plot of land it has left following years of state and more recently industrial encroachment, a small Mapuche-Huilliche indigenous community near Puerto Montt, Region X is now resting all of its hopes on a group of strangers in far-away Washington, DC.

This past February – out of legal options here in Chile – the Pepiukelen community sent its case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). An autonomous branch of the Organization of American States, the IACHR examines accusations of human rights violations, referring more egregious cases to its sister body, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.

Nine months later the IACHR has yet to rule on the case. And, with the latest in a series of recently arrived salmon industry factories now beginning to operate quite literally on their doorsteps, hope springs far from eternal for the eight large families that make up the Pepiukelen community.

"At this point there’s still a chance the Inter-American Commission could rule in our favor, but honestly, we’re disappointed with what’s happening up there. I’ve spoken with lawyers from different parts of Latin America who have presented cases before the Commission, and it’s never taken this long before," said Francisco Vera Millaquén, the werken (spokesperson) for the indigenous community.

The Pepiukelen community has resided in the area near Pargua, a launching point for ferries traveling between mainland Chile and the island of Chiloé, for as long as anyone can remember. Maps dating back to the time of Chile’s independence suggest the community once possessed some 11,000 acres of land. Two centuries later, mostly as a result of expropriations by the state, the community has seen that vast property reduced to just 8.5 acres, land on which Vera and his family members continue to support themselves through farming.

But it’s not just the size of the property that has changed. Thinking back to the years of his youth, Vera recalls the sloping, seaside plot with its then crystal-clear river and easy access to the beach as a magical playground.

"It’s difficult," said Vera, struggling unsuccessfully to contain his emotions. "Years ago, right here, there was a school. And we’d play all over this area. We’d always swim in the river. Every summer we used it as a natural swimming pool. It was the same thing here on the beach…And now that’s all gone."

The most notable changes have taken place over the course of the past 15 years, a period of time that corresponds precisely with a regional boom in farmed salmon. With exports increasing more than 10-fold since the early 1990s, the now US$2.2 billion-per-year farmed salmon industry has transformed southern Chile’s economy and now employs an estimated 45,000 people, principally in Regions X and XI.

Considered by many a godsend for the mostly rural southern region, for Vera and his family the salmon boom has been more like a living nightmare. The start with, the "farms" – offshore raft structures where salmon are raised in pens by the tens of thousands – have polluted area waters and thus driven local artisan fishermen and shell fish harvesters out of business.

"It’s not a coincidence," said Vera, noting that over the past two decades local shell fish have disappeared, red tides have become increasingly common, and native fish have simply died off. "It’s all a chain that began approximately 20 years ago when people still thought these companies were setting up operations that wouldn’t be harmful to the environment. Today it’s finally being shown that’s not the case."

The industry has also spawned a host of satellite businesses, such as processing plants, fish meal and oil factories, and salmon feed plants: precisely the kinds of factories that because of Pargua’s proximity to Chiloé (one of the most concentrated salmon farming areas in the country) have one by one set up shop in the immediate vicinity of the Pepiukelen community. Vera’s farm is now surrounded by four large plants.

"What we have now is a landscape that is completely, absolutely horrible," said Vera. "Besides painting their facilities ugly colors that don’t at all fit the surroundings, the companies are also causing tremendous harm to the environment."

In the late 1990s, when the first of the factories moved in, members of the unprepared Pepiukelen community had little idea what was taking place. But in 2001, when a salmon company called Long Beach managed to acquire land directly abutting Vera’s property – just meters from his front door – the community took direct action.

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"Here the authorities have always just shut their eyes. And when I say authorities, I mean all of the authorities: starting with the president and her cabinet, the regional government, the judges who’ve sold out, and finally the members of Congress who have simply looked past the problem. They haven’t wanted to help," said Vera.

The community leader did note one exception: Sen. Alejandro Navarro of the Socialist Party, who has tried to exert some influence on behalf of the Pepiukelen. According to Navarro, the problem in Chile is that both the courts and government environmental authorities have a built in bias toward "mega-projects," i.e. business ventures involving substantial amounts of capital investment.

"In this particular case, and despite a host of irregularities, the project was allowed to go ahead because of the law’s passion for development and production and because of the intolerance of Region X’s regional authorities," said Sen. Navarro.

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Sen. Navarro for one is convinced the IACHR will eventually rule in favor of the Pepiukelen Community. "We’re going to take this all the way to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights," he said. "And I think Chile’s going to lose. Just like what happened in Ralco, with the Pehuenche community, Chile’s going to be convicted and the state’s going to have to shell out a lot of money to pay for the damage caused by this private venture."

Vera, however, appears less and less convinced. With the Los Fiordos factory now basically completed and the IACHR dragging its feet, hope is certainly running thin. "Although we still have some faith, bit by bit we’re losing it, because we haven’t yet seen any clear, concrete result. Up to this point the Commission has just done things to prolong the process," he said.

The salmon companies, meanwhile, "want this land at any price," Vera added. "It doesn’t matter to them what they have to do to get it. That’s the final objective. If they have to eliminate people, they’ll do it. If they have to remove people, they’ll remove them. They don’t have a problem doing any of that."

Chile fishermen protest fishery depletion - government crticized for extending “mining industry mentality” to the fishing industry.

Chilean coastal fishermen protest depletion of hake

Chilean fishermen used public debates in the coastal town of Valparaiso Wednesday as a forum to criticize Chile’s fishing policies. The debates, titled “Who sells you fish,” focused on the current depletion of the hake population along Chile’s coasts.

The local fishermen criticized the government for implementing policies that fail to maintain economic stability in the industry and directly contribute to the decimation of fish populations.

The debates were attended by industry leaders, as well as local fishermen working to re-establish fish catch limits.

Local fishermen criticized the government for extending “mining industry mentality” to the fishing industry. This “mining mentality,” as described by president of the National Confederation of Artesian Fishermen (Conapach), Cosme Caracciolo, is stripping Chile’s seas of extremely valuable fish populations.

According to statistics from the Institute for Fishing Promotion (IFOP), in 2002 the estimated hake biomass around Chile’s coasts was 1.5 million tons. Today the figure is just 272,000 tons.

“Our fish haul has dropped by almost 15% over the last few years. The problem lies with the large-scale fishing industry that takes out huge amounts of fish, thereby affecting the biomass,” said Caracciolo.

Senator Nelson Ávila, who voted against fishing limitations, acknowledged at the debates that a modification of the current fishing system is not likely to occur.

“There is a lack of political will to resolve the problems of the fishing industry because the state is trapped in a tangle of interests,” he said. “Conservation today is not oriented to the fish, but instead to the industrial fishing companies.”

Here is the full article.