Glencore says it plans to eventually phase out its coal operations in Colombia. Cerrejón is one of at least 12 mines Glencore says it will shut around the world to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 15% before 2026 and 50% by 2035.
Environmental advocates involved in the report are calling on the company to conduct the closure in a responsible manner, one that involves comprehensive reparations to communities who will have to live with the cumulative damages caused by Glencore’s mine for many years after it shuts.
“With the impending closure of the mine, there is a risk that social and environmental injustices will be exacerbated, and with them the impunity in which the company has been operating,” the CENSAT and CINEP report says.
One major concern is for the health of Wayuu and Afro-Colombian communities who suffer from respiratory issues and other health problems because of toxic pollutants in the air, water and soils. Leobardo Alberto Sierra Frias, a Wayuu Indigenous leader and environmental defender from La Guajira, told Mongabay that Glencore has cleared large swaths of forest and destroyed the rivers and streams.
“They have killed all that dry, tropical forest, the waters and the territory that was ours,” he said.
In response to the allegations raised in the reports, Glencore told Mongabay the NGOs had included “incorrect” and “outdated references” in their findings on the Antapaccay case in Peru. The company also denies any involvement in the displacement of communities in Colombia while INTERCOR owned the mine there. It disputes allegations that it’s involved in threats or attacks on community leaders or other human rights defenders, and denies contaminating or altering water sources in Colombia based on its data.
It also said its Cerrejón mine is “prepared and continues to maintain a closure and reversion plan that includes progressive closure measures, associated with the responsible management of environmental and social impacts.”
Life near the mines is punctuated by environmental disturbances, including poor air quality, surface and groundwater contamination and heavy metals in the flora and fauna. Photo by Sofia Yanjari.
European banks and wallets
The Peruvian and Colombian reports were supported by U.K.-based charity Oxfam and its Fair Finance International network. A third report, by Oxfam and FFI, shows how European banks and financial institutions helped finance Glencore’s operations in Peru and Colombia. They accounted for nearly 50% of the total $88.1 billion the company received in loans and underwriting between January 2016 and June 2023.
Yann Louvel, a senior financial institutions policy analyst at Reclaim Finance, told Mongabay this may be explained by the fact that Glencore’s headquarters are in Switzerland, and “coal policies adopted by most European banks contain loopholes and are not stringent enough to exclude Glencore despite its coal expansion plans” and their own environmental standards.
The reports list UBS of Switzerland, BNP Paribas and Société Générale of France, ING Group of the Netherlands, and HSBC of the U.K. as among the banks that have provided Glencore with loans and underwriting since 2016. Among these companies, ING Group was the only one that responded to Mongabay’s requests for comment, saying it has “social and environmental risk policies in place” and that “the position of Indigenous peoples is explicitly taken into account in our due diligence process.”
Several of the banks that provided Glencore with loans and underwriting in the past seven years, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, Société Générale and ABN AMRO, recently pulled out of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a collaboration to certify the climate targets set by corporations and control financing for fossil fuels. They cited concerns that the initiative’s emissions target-setting goals are too hard to meet, according to Reuters.
According to the NGOs, since 2016 major European banks and investors have pumped $44.2 billion into Glencore. The top investor was Groupe BPCE, a French bank that loaned $802.7 million to Glencore. Abrdn, a U.K.-based investment company, was the second-largest investor, followed by Royal London Group and Legal & General of the U.K. and UBS of Switzerland.
Glencore’s Cerrejón coal mine in the department of La Guajira, Colombia. Image by Hour.poing via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
An Abrdn spokesperson told Mongabay that the company is “aware of the various issues that have been raised and have engaged with the company to understand the steps being taken to both respect and uphold human rights and mitigate environmental impacts.”
In recent years, many institutional investors have divested from Glencore, including the Norwegian Government Pension Fund in 2020 and its Dutch counterpart, which cited “bribery, corruption, conflicts with local communities, and poor working conditions” as the “major sustainability risks” that pushed it to exclude Glencore from its portfolio in 2021.
A global coalition of institutional investors, including Legal & General and HSBC, co-filed a shareholder resolution in January 2023 pressuring Glencore to disclose how it intends to align its coal mining plans with the 2015 Paris Agreement goals. But Glencore’s recent “Climate Report,” published in March 2023, didn’t offer the disclosures that were sought, according to a statement by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR).
Nearly a quarter of shareholders voted in support of the resolution at the company’s annual general meeting this year. But despite their wishes, Glencore’s board recommended voting against the resolution.
“Glencore has made clear and public commitments to human rights and respecting the rights of Indigenous peoples and therefore there is a clear expectation by the company’s investors that action will be taken by the company to ensure its own commitments are being upheld,” Naomi Hogan, company strategy lead at ACCR, told Mongabay.
“Glencore’s shareholders would expect that the company take reputable action at the highest level to ensure there is an end to any human rights abuses,” she said.
Banner image: Activists protesting at Glencore’s coal mining site in Cerrejón, Colombia. Image by Ende Gelände Hamburg via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
Glencore’s coal expansion plans face shareholder and Indigenous opposition
Related listening from Mongabay’s podcast: A conversation with Cultural Survival’s Daisee Francour and The Oakland Institute’s Anuradha Mittal about their thoughts on Indigenous land rights and the global push for land privatization. Listen here:
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Adaptation To Climate Change, Climate, Climate Change, Coal, Conflict, Energy, Finance, Fossil Fuels, Governance, Government, Human Rights, Indigenous Communities, Indigenous Culture, Indigenous Cultures, Indigenous Groups, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Land Speculation, Mining, Pollution, Violence
Colombia, Europe, Latin America, Peru, South America
Glencore
Source link : https://news.mongabay.com/2023/12/reports-allege-abuses-by-glencore-in-peru-and-colombia-and-the-banks-funding-them/
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Publish date : 2023-12-27 03:00:00
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