The inaugural First Stewards symposium, to be held July 17-20 in Washington, D.C. is a national event that examines the impact of climate change on indigenous coastal cultures and explores solutions based on millennia of traditional ecological knowledge.

Hundreds of native leaders, witnesses and climate scientists will join policy-makers and non-government organizations for groundbreaking dialogue in what is planned to be an annual meeting at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

The Hoh, Makah and Quileute tribes and the Quinault Indian Nation created the symposium because indigenous coastal people are among the most affected by climate change.

“We need everyone engaged in working on adaptations, mitigation and strategies and solutions to climate change,” said Micah McCarty, chairman of the Makah and of the First Stewards steering committee. “Even the polar bears and people of the Arctic Circle cannot escape the second-hand smoke of the vehicle tailpipe and the smokestack that leave such a large carbon footprint. Arctic Circle villages must adapt and change now while still trying to preserve their culture and way of life. The rest of us have a little time if we act now,” McCarty said. Traditional knowledge is needed to make climate science and subsequent models meaningful on a human and local scale.

“Coastal Indian people are already dealing with the effects of climate change,” said Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC). The NWIFC is an inter-tribal support services organization that assists 19 member tribes in western Washington with natural resources management. “The glaciers that feed our life-giving rivers are melting. Reservations are flooding more often, forcing some tribes to have to move their homes to higher ground. Tribes are the natural choice to lead the nation in the response to climate change, beginning with this symposium in July.”

Regional panels will share climate adaptation strategies from coastal and island ecosystems nationwide where Indian Country, Alaskan Natives and indigenous U.S. Pacific Islanders are at the forefront, creating an incubator for climate change solutions. Tribal regulatory environments allow for demonstrations of solutions to pressing needs, such as renewable energy and adaptation strategies for villages.

“We want to see meaningful collaboration borne out of this first symposium that over the coming years yields effective work to make changes in the way we live on earth to sustain all of us for centuries to come,” McCarty said.

The symposium is in partnership with scientific, tribal and governmental and non-governmental organizations including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and National Marine Fisheries Service, The Nature Conservancy, National Congress of American Indians and Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. Other partners include Salmon Defense, United South and Eastern Tribes, Uncas Consulting Services, American Native Renewables, and EA Engineering, Science, and Technology.

For more information or to become a sponsor, visit www.firststewards.org.

Contacts:

Leonda Levchuk, National Museum of the American Indian, Public Affairs Specialist,(202) 633-6613;Vernon Smith, National Marine Sanctuary Program, Media Director, (301)713-7248 ext. 248; Debbie Preston, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, dpreston@nwifc.org, (360) 780-1295; Robin Stanton, The Nature Conservancy, rstanton@tnc.org, (360)425-478-5641

By: Young Writers 

By Samuel Bliss

[ReadtheDirt.org] Editor’s Note: One of our young and empowered voices—Samuel Bliss—gives us a run down on the issue of bottled water in the Northwest. Even if we don’t want to admit it, the Northwest is not immune from large corporations acquiring rights to its water. This piece complements our previous piece “Bottle the Skagit River?”.

Sam Bliss is a junior studying Environmental Economics and Spanish at Western Washington University. He is a member of a team, along with fellow Students for Sustainable Water club members Anna Amundson and Julia Shure, which won a grant from the university’s Green Energy Fee fund to install water bottle filling stations on campus. The installation of these filtered-water dispensers was accompanied by a campaign to promote education and awareness regarding Bellingham’s municipal water source, Lake Whatcom, and the issues surrounding its maintenance and protection. Sam is an ardent activist for water as a human right rather than a for-profit commodity; he and his fellow club members are part of an ongoing crusade to ban the sale of bottled water at Western. Cycling, songwriting, reading, running, coffee-drinking, breathing, running, eating, singing, cooking, football, learning, laughing, cross-country skiing, crossword puzzles, yoga, and the guitar are among Sam’s many other passions.

The commoditization and privatization of water has taken off with the relatively new advent of bottled water. But why is this so bad? Typically, the lofty price of bottled water is a good place to start. If you’re lucky enough to find a machine where you can still buy a 20-ounce bottle for one dollar, you’re paying 5 cents per ounce of liquid. Compare that to the price of gasoline: even for $3 per gallon of gas, each ounce costs just a fraction over 2 cents. Most municipal water, where bottled water companies like Dasani (Coca-Cola) and Aquafina (Pepsi) get their water, in contrast costs less than 1 cent per gallon. This creates an exorbitant profit margin that puts even oil companies to shame.

EartH2O, an Oregon bottled water company, is just one example of a company taking advantage of these huge revenue-to-cost discrepancies. EartH2O’s water comes from the same natural sources as the Opal Springs municipal water. Not only are they ripping off those who buy their water, they are selling a public resource to turn a private profit.

Nestlé Waters North America, a division of Switzerland-based Nestlé SA – the largest food-and-beverage company in the world – attempted to do the same thing in Enumclaw, Washington in 2008. The plan was to collect water from Boise Spring, a major water source for the city, and bottle it in a 250,000-square-foot plant nearby. Calculations done by the city concluded that with Nestlé taking it’s share, the public system would no longer be able to support new costumers by 2038. This concern was compounded with others such as the expected increase in truck traffic and the company’s business practices elsewhere; ultimately, the proposal was shot down by a 6-1 City Council vote before the details of the project had even been hashed out. Nestlé has a track record of using predatory tactics to obtain rights to pump public spring water at far below market prices.

In addition to being denied the right to bottle Enumclaw’s water, Nestlé has withdrawn proposed projects in Black Diamond and Orting, Washington for logistical reasons, according to company officials. The corporation continues to look for new sources in the Pacific Northwest, and has had its sights set on Cascade Locks, Oregon, in the Columbia River Gorge region, for quite some time now. Though the city’s leaders at first welcomed the proposal as an opportunity to provide a boost to their local economy through property tax collection and job creation, dissent (mostly from critics of Nestlé and of bottled water in general rather than from Cascade Locks community members) has held the plan at bay for several years now. The current state of the situation, according to The Sierra Club: “The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) holds the water rights for Oxbow Springs in the Columbia River Gorge, which it currently uses for a fish hatchery. To enable Nestlé to bottle and sell the spring water, ODFW has proposed creating a water exchange with the City of Cascade Locks: ODFW would get access to Cascade Locks’ municipal water [to use for its hatchery] and Cascade Locks would get access to the spring water which it would in turn sell to Nestlé [at the municipal water rate].” The Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) must approve this permit proposal, and has indicated it will make a decision on the permit in the next month or two.

Municipal water sources are tested for toxins and contaminants hundreds of times per month under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency, and scores are made public in the Environmental Working Group’s National Tap Water Database. Bottled water, on the other hand, is in theory regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however the FDA does not have even one staff member fully designated to oversee the industry. About 60 to 70 percent of bottled water sold in the U.S. is not subject to any federal oversight because it is sold in the same state as it is bottled, according to theNatural Resources Defense Council. This is because the FDA is responsible only for bottled water that is shipped across state boundaries. Most states claim to regulate this FDA oversight-exempt water, yet dedicate very few, if any, resources to this monitoring; more than 10 states do not supervise their intrastate bottled water at all.

Waste stands as another major effect of the consumption of bottled water; 1.5 million tons of plastic waste are created each year by bottled water. These plastic bottles are produced using up to 47 million gallons of oil, according to Food and Water Watch. Approximately 30 million of the 80 million single-serving water bottles consumed each day are simply thrown away, as reported by the 2009 feature-length documentary Tapped.

Plastic does not biodegrade, rather it photo-degrades. This means that it is broken into smaller and smaller pieces by light, until the fragments can be mistaken for plankton or other food by marine and avian life. Almost all plastics ever produced remain in existence.

Bottled water is only a small part of an infinitely more disturbing trend: the global shift toward the privatization of local freshwater supplies. The access to safe and affordable water is an undeniable right that must not be commoditized by multinational corporations buying up groundwater and distribution rights in an effort to take advantage of the fact that water is fast becoming the world’s most precious resource. No one should be profiting from water scarcity. Clean water shortages arise from the superabundance of pollution and the lack of adequate environmental protection, but corporate control is not the solution. Instead we must focus on new and innovative ways to conserve the clean water we still have and to purify the dirty water. Human ingenuity is the answer; it’s a resource that is often overlooked in our doomsday predictions.

Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and member of Veterans For Peace -Bruce Gagnon will speak on U.S. expanding militarism, and its impact on the economic crisis here at home. He will stress the need to promote the conversion of the military industrial complex to sustainable production if we hope to have any impact on climate change. 

April 23 –Olympia –To be determined

April 24 –Olympia –6:30 PM, Traditions Café, 300 5th Avenue Southwest

April 25 –Walla Walla -7:00 PM, Whitman College, Olin Hall

April 26 –Bellingham-4:00 PM, Western Washington University, Arntzen Hall

April 27 –Bellingham –7:00 PM, Mt. Baker Theatre’s Encore Room

April 28 –Seattle -7:30 –8:00 AM, Interviewed on KEXP, 90.3 FM

April 28 –Redmond-1:00 PM, Soul Food Books, 15748 Redmond Way

April 29 –Seattle -4:00 pm, University Temple United Methodist Church

April 30 –Tacoma -12:30 –1:30 pm, University of Washington, Tacoma, Carwein Auditorium

Sponsors of the Seattle area events include Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Veterans for Peace (Seattle Chapter), United Nations Association, Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation, University Temple United Methodist Church, The Alliance for Democracy and the Abe Keller Peace Education Fund.

More details at http://psnukefree.blogspot.com/p/events.html

Copyright © 2009-2011 EcoSalon. All rights reserved.

Activists Challenge Proposal To Bottle Water In Columbia Gorge

March 27, 2012 | OPB

Environmentalists and one of Oregon’s public sector unions are challenging the recent approval of new water permits in Cascade Locks, but controversy surrounds a proposal to bottle water in the Columbia Gorge.

The appeal comes from the “Keep Nestle Out of the Gorge” coalition. It includes environmental groups Food and Water Watch and Bark!, as well as the state and local employee union, Oregon AFSCME. The permits they are challenging are a prerequisite to a potential water exchange between the city of Cascade Locks and the state of Oregon, meant to facilitate a Nestle bottling plant. Oregon’s Water Resources Department says the challenge has to focus narrowly on harm to other water rights’ holders. But opponents, like former Multnomah County commissioner Barbara Willer, have broader objections.

“It is basically a privatization of a public natural resource –- one that humans and other species need to survive. It sets a horrible precedent that our resources are up for sale,” Miller says.

Officials in Cascade Locks defend the proposal, saying Nestle would be just another water customer—and would bring jobs and property tax revenue to the city.

See http://earthfix.kcts9.org/water/article/activists-challenge-proposal-to-bottle-water-in-co/