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Last Update: July 16, 2008
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- Paper Pulp Mills - Uruguay
- Corporate Accountability and Human Rights
- Climate Change and Human Rights
Botnia Pulp Mill Conflict
Anti-Botnia March in Uruguay Breaks Record!
Environmental Social Movements Against Pulp Mill Investment Reenergizes
Border Argentina – Uruguay. April 30, 2007. A record-breaking 130,000 people marched yesterday to peacefully protest against the installation of a controversial pulp mill in construction by the Finnish Metsa Botnia on the Argentine-Uruguayan border.
The massive march is indicative of the growing and sustained public opposition to the investment despite its securing international financial support from IFC and other financial institutions. The huge (and larger than anticipated turnout) marked the yearly anniversary of two previous marches in 2005 and 2006, when 50,000 and 120,000 marched to oppose the 1.2 billion dollar investment in a Kraft pulp papermill in what would be, if completed, Latin America's largest pulp mill, producing 1 million tons of pulp per year. It also categorically counters information the company Botnia is known to have given to investors and media sources in Finland suggesting that local protestors will slowly disipate. The reverse is occuring.
Last year's march which brought togther 120,000 people already set the record for the largest protest ever against a World Bank financed project, as well as being the planet's largest registered environmental social movement. This year's bigger turnout surprised most onlookers who expected to see a smaller public turnout as the conflict draws out and the mill construction is near complete. Local public sentiment against the investment is however, clearly not dwindling but actually growing as time progresses.
People of all walks of life, including students, professionals, retirees, environmentalists, leaders from social movments around the region, children, infants, and toddlers, (Argentines and a growing number of Uruguayans) participated in the day-long event, caravaning in from around the country and from the nearby locality of Gualeguaychú whose population, at 90,000, is significantly inferior to the massive turnout.
A bus load of Uruguayans who came across the border the evening before, was held up for several hours by border police, who expressed disdain for their countrymen and women protesting against the billion dollar investment which during construction provides considerable jobs to a local workforce, but which once operating will only create 300 low paying jobs and be granted a 30 year tax free haven, and all of whose product is destined for industrialized country markets, who on average consume ten times more paper than Uruguayans or Argentines.
Some Uruguayan's voices opposing the mill but laregly supressed by local media and government, argue that the benefits of the investment, despite being Uruguay ' s largest foreign direct investment ever, is too little when you consider the great discord and conflict the pulp mill project has caused between two historically friendly neighbors now entrenched in an unprecedented international dispute. Further, many point to the World Bank's former chief economist Laurence Summers, who argued in a confidential memorandum leaked in 1991 for the export of contaminating industries to developing countries. The move south by companies from cantaminating industries like the Finnish Metsa Botnia, or the Swedish Stora Enso, which is due to arrive in Uruguay in the near future, and which is expected to produce more pulp that Metsa Botnia, is showing that this strategy is actually playing itself out.
Metsa Botnia, the Finnish company constructing the mill and the Finnish government, who is part owner of a substantial
portion of the investment through its public export credit agency Finnvera, and 49$ owner of the chemical producer and supplier of Botnia to be constructed at the mill site, have refused to participate or help mediate a solution, claiming the conflict solely between Uruguay and Argentina.
The pulp mill project, supported by the World Bank's IFC despite a scathing audit by its control body, the CAO, sustaining that the project violates numerous of the IFC's social and environmental safeguards, as well as its disclosure policy, has also received subsequent support (as a direct result of the World Bank approving the loan) from several private and public financial institutions, including Nordea, the Nordic Investment Bank, Calyon, and Finnvera.
Local community stakeholders took to the international bridge linking (now dividing) Argentina and Uruguay and have sustained a roadblock ever since Novermber 20, 2006, the day of the World Bank decision to finance Metsa Botnia. Only three terrestial passages exist between Uruguay and Argentina , and this one, the site of yesterday's march, is the most important. Uruguay claims to have lost US$400 million to stakeholder roadblocks last year.
Recent negotiations between Argentina and Uruguay , facilited by the King of Spain, have raised the issue of relocation as a possible solution. Local stakeholders who have carried forth relentless and growing opposition including yesterday's 130,000 person march, argue that relocation is the only solution.
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