Greenwash Gold for Olympic Sponsors

With a casebook of unethical activity from devastating the Gulf of Mexico to fast-tracking climate catastrophe, the decision to name BP as London’s 2012 “Sustainability Partner” has provoked numerous protest actions and campaigns. One campaign which aims to draw attention to the absence of fair play or respect in Olympic sponsorship is Greenwash Gold. The project is targeting controversial sponsors including BP, Dow Chemical and Rio Tinto in light of their poor track records on environmental pollution and human rights abuses. OT editor Judith Schossböck spoke to Greenwash Gold campaigner and London Mining Network representative Richard Solly about the project.

Occupied Times: What can users learn on the Greenwash Gold website?

Richard Solly: The individual user is encouraged to learn more about the companies featured and is directed to sources of further information on the websites of the organisations involved in Greenwash Gold. We hope that by learning more, users will be inspired to become active in the groups sponsoring the campaign, or in some other way.

OT: Is this just a form of clicktivism or feel-good activism or has there already been a concrete output?

RS: We believe that the invitation to take action by voting in the campaign will draw attention to the record of the companies featured. It already has done so: as a result of launching the campaign on 16th April, there was much greater media coverage than ever before of the Rio Tinto AGM on 19th April, and of the issues about which communities are complaining. We hope that by spreading information about the companies and letting people hear the voices of directly affected communities we can inspire people to become involved in the struggle. The internet voting campaign is not an end in itself but a means to an end.

OT: Who deserves the Greenwash Gold medal in 2012?

RS: All of the companies proposed for Greenwash Gold deserve the award – they have all done terrible things! We hope the voting will draw attention to their records rather than simply make people think that one is worse than the others.

OT: Community devastation is mentioned on the website as a destructive result of supporting these companies. How is this the case?

RS: There are many examples. BP is responsible for grave economic damage to communities relying on fishing or tourism on the Gulf of Mexico. It is also participating in the pollution of air and water in the tar sands project in Alberta and thus to the health impacts on indigenous communities downstream, whose hunting and trapping livelihoods have also been badly affected.

Rio Tinto’s operations at Bingham Canyon in Utah contribute to many dozens of premature deaths in the area each year because of its heavy contribution to air pollution. Its Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia is driving away nomadic families and damaging their livelihoods. In other parts of the world, it is profiting from destruction of indigenous sacred sites, the catastrophic pollution of river systems, and militarisation by the Indonesian armed forces in West Papua, with attendant human rights abuses. Pollution from its Panguna mine in Bougainville sparked a war as indigenous communities sought to close the mine and the Papua New Guinea and Australian Governments tried to stop them. In Michigan it is violating an indigenous sacred site at Eagle Rock. At Alma, Quebec, its lockout of workers at its aluminum smelter causes division in the community and strain in families – similar at Boron, California, two years ago. Its association with Muriel Mining in northwestern Colombia in a gold and molybdenum exploration project has caused alarm and displacement among Indigenous and African-descent communities as the area has become militarised and local people’s legal right to consultation is ignored and manipulated.

In a way, whatever we do that benefits these companies supports these destructive processes. Thus, they should not be given the benefit of positive publicity through association with the Olympics. Don’t let them win!