At least 116 environmental activists died last year while campaigning against mining, logging, water and land grabs, according to a report.
The number of deaths is rising, UK-based group Global Witness reported, with two people dying on average every week – up a fifth on 2013.
Some have been shot by police during protests or gunned down by hired assassins, its research found, while many more activists are threatened by the companies they oppose.
With work already under way on the banks where the dam is to be built, it might seem as if Site C is a done deal.
Premier Christy Clark certainly hopes so. She views the start of the $9-billion project as one of her two greatest accomplishments (the other being an agreement in principle with Petronas for proposed development of an $11-billion LNG plant).
But despite all the activity by contractors building access roads and clearing land for work camps, tunnels and dam foundations, BC Hydro’s Site C project could yet be brought to a halt.
Sitting in his office on the outskirts of Montreal, Serge Otis Simon, council chief of the Kanastake — a band of Mohawks — is clear about what might happen if the proposed Energy East Pipeline is routed through the band's land, in spite of their opposition. "The Warrior Society are men whose duty is given by creation to protect the land, people, and community," he told me, describing a group of Mohawks who go by that name.
“The most important question raised by the climate summit may be: Does the power to change the world belong to the people in the conference rooms of Le Bourget or to the people in the streets of Paris?” – Rebecca Solnit, “Power in Paris“
Can the earth be saved by bureaucrats in long meetings, reciting jargon and acronyms while surrounded by leaning towers of documents? That is what’s supposed to happen in France this month, when representatives from all the world’s nations gather for COP21, the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (U.N.F.C.C.C.), and the eleventh session of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
A handful of protesters from Sum of Us, Greenpeace, the Ecology Action Centre and the Clean Ocean Action Committee delivered a massive, 233,000-signature petition to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) on Wednesday, opposing what they say are extremely lax safety standards around Shell's drilling program. Currently, if a subsea oil well blowout were to occur, the company would be allowed to take 12 to 13 days to contain it. Shell's original proposal suggested it could take 21 days to get a capping stack to the site.
The French government is trying to silence social movements, but we refuse to go quietly, says campaigner Pascoe Sabido.
In the days after the tragic events on 13 November in Paris, everything concerning the climate talks was in limbo. A state of emergency was called. Would the summit go ahead at all? What would it mean for the mass mobilizations being planned?
