Saving Iceland is an international campaign to defend the Icelandic Wilderness, the largest remaining wild area of Europe, from heavy industry. Transnational companies, particularly the aluminium industry, and the Icelandic government and power companies have begun to implement an immense program that will, if executed, transform the country from an outstanding area of natural beauty into another heavily industrialised and polluted wasteland. Plans include construction of new aluminium smelters and expansion of existing ones, an oil refinery and silicon factories, the harnessing of the country’s major glacial river systems and destruction of outstanding geological landscapes and unique geothermal ecosystems for new power plants.

To support this fight or find out more please come to one of the talks - we'll be showing films about the campaign so far and the areas that stand to be destroyed as well as direct action that has happened in response:

Edinburgh - Wed. 9th April, 8-11pm, Forest Cafe, Bristo Place
Mon. 14th April, 7-9pm, Chaplaincy Auditorium, Potterrow

St. Andrews - Mon. 14th April, Lounge Room, Mansfield Building, St. Andrews Uni

Dundee - Tue. 15th April, venue TBC

Abredeen - Wed. 16th April, venue TBC

Glasgow - Tue. 22nd April, Strathclyde Uni

Stirling - Mon. 28th April, Stirling Uni

Email savingicelandscotland(at)riseup.net for info. Posters available here.

Saving Iceland S.O.S

Corporations searching for cheap energy Iceland, with its vast possibilities of hydroelectric and geothermal energy, is an appealing target for ALCOA, RioTinto-Alcan, Rusal-Century and others. Using fossil fuels for energy-intensive industries is becoming costly and insecure. There is increasing concern about carbon emissions; the green image of hydroelectric and geothermal energy is appealing. Intrinsically unsustainable processes such as aluminium production can be made to appear green. In reality, ~ six tons of CO2-equivalent is still emitted per ton of aluminium when powered without fossil fuels. But Iceland has a comfortable amount of carbon emission credits, and pollution prevention schemes are lenient. Nonetheless, Icelandic industry will easily exceed the 1.6 million tonnes of CO2e emissions permitted under the Kyoto protocol if all of the projects materialise. Prime minister Geir Harde has says Iceland is not responsible for climate problems and wants to negotiate a new exemption for the post-Kyoto era.

Destruction of ecosystems
Aluminium smelting and oil refining are highly polluting processes and threaten human health, marine life and fish populations. The ecological consequences of the large dams that would power them are also grim. The massive alteration of major river systems around the world has led to more than a third of the species of sweet water fish to be extinct or endangered. Reservoirs flood large areas of subarctic highland tundra, including vast bird-breeding areas and wetlands. The constantly fluctuating water levels in reservoirs in Iceland cause dust storms and soil erosion, which has a devastating effect on the vegetation of the region, magnifying the destructive effect of the dams on local ecosystems.

Dams block the normal flow of glacial fine silt, which has been shown to play a major role in nutrient supply to plankton. These organisms form the basis of most marine food chains as well as being a major carbon sink. Damming Iceland’s glacial rivers would deplete fish stocks in the North Atlantic as well as significantly speeding up global warming.

Geothermal myths
While geothermal power produces a relatively small amount of greenhouse gases, large-scale plants are certainly not green. Toxic wastewater is disposed of by pumping it back into the borehole, increasing the frequency of earthquakes, or it is pumped untreated into streams and lakes, wiping out valuable ecosystems, as treatment is too expensive. Part of one of Iceland’s largest lakes, Thingvallavatn, is now biologically dead. Extraction of underground fluids leads to changes in groundwater movements, commonly including drying of unique hot springs and geysers and pollution of pure subsurface spring water. Intensive geothermal drilling is affecting the habitat of four endangered birds: the falcon, greylag goose, harlequin duck and raven. Finally, the biological components of geothermal areas are complicated. All that scientists know is that they constitute an almost completely unexplored universe.

Details of current plans
Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national power company, has, in spite of many protests and direct actions, recently finished the 190 meter high Karahnjukar dam and a number of other dams solely for a new smelter for the American aluminium giant ALCOA in Reyðarfjörður. ALCOA wants to build another aluminium factory in the north of the country, at Bakki near the town of Húsavík. To facilitate this, Landsvirkjun wants to expand their capacity and plans to further dam the Thjorsá River in order to clear capacity in the north for the second ALCOA smelter. If Landsvirkjun forces the three dams in lower Thjorsá upon the rural communities in the area, the upland wetlands of Thjórsárver and lake Langisjór are under threat of destruction in order to provide enough water for lower dams. In this way, Thjórsárver that has been saved by opposition from the local community comes under threat once more.

Century Aluminum, a part of the recently formed Russian-Swiss RUSAL-Glencore-SUAL conglomerate, has expanded its Grundartangi smelter and wants a second smelter near Helguvik (south of Reykjavik), with a projected capacity of at least 250.000 metric tons per year. But don’t worry; the environmental impact assessment states that we do not have to be concerned about pollution at Helguvik. It is very windy there, so it will just blow away… This is hardly surprising: the EIA was made by HRV, “the aluminium industry’s foremost construction engineers”, as they say on their website.

Construction has now started (March 2008), even though no impact assessments have been made for the geothermal drilling that is supposed to power it. Hitaveita Sudurnesja on the Reykjanes peninsula would develop a range of fields for Century, though no contract is made yet. The drilling will destroy the area in the same way that the Hengill geothermal area is currently being destroyed by Reykjavik Energy to power Century’s Grundartangi smelter. RE wants to further expand its activities by building yet another power plant in the Hengill area, Bitruvirkjun, for Alcan.
Alcan, now part of RioTinto, wants to expand its existing Straumsvik smelter, but local opposition has thwarted their plans for the moment. Both Alcan and the Icelandic aluminium company Altech want to build smelters in Thorlakshöfn.

Reykjavik Energy is considering damming Farid, a river that runs out of Hagavatn Lake, south of Langjökull glacier. R&D Carbon intends to build a highly polluting anode rod plant at Katanes in Hvalfjordur. A Russian-Icelandic consortium have recently received permission to build an oil refinery in the Westfjords area producing 150.000 barrels per day destroying another area of immense beauty.
Environmental scientists have alerted the people of Reykjavík to the grave consequences if these projects are realised. They expect that Faxaflói bay, where the capital is situated, “is destined to quickly become the most heavily polluted area in Northern Europe”.

Global pillage
ALCOA is scheming to utilise the melting glaciers of Greenland to power new smelters there. ALCOA has planned at least seven new dams for smelters in the southern Amazon and wants to build a heavily opposed gas powered smelter in Trinidad. RioTinto-Alcan has signed a letter of intent with the government of Cameroon to expand the existing Alucam smelter and build a second smelter. The Lom Pangar Dam, to be constructed by the government, would power this. Alcan has a large number of projects planned in Africa - its so-called ‘Greenfield project pipeline’ includes Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar and South Africa. Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949-1986. Now it wants to come back and develop a new smelter in the near zero-tax 'Coega Development Zone' near Port Elizabeth, powered by coal and nuclear power delivered by Eskom, one of the worlds largest electricity companies.
Elkom is a 'sister-company' of Iceland's national power company Landsvirkjun. Landsvirkun wants to be part of this deal and more generally branch out to Africa, in a joint operation with Iceland's national bank Landsbankinn. Landsvirkjun is trying to sell its expertise to Eskom's various hydro projects in Mozambique, Uganda and Congo and would love to take part in damming the Congo River, a project twice the size of China's Three Gorges, which will have a devastating effect on the central African rainforest.
Let's not forget that the companies mentioned have a history of human rights violations and charges of serious environmental damage and corruption. ALCOA alone has been sentenced up to 50 times in just the last decade.

Protests
Icelandic environmentalists are prepared for a battle that is certain to go on for many years. International help and pressure will be of paramount importance in our fight.
Summer solstice 2005 marked the beginning of the first camp against the Karahnjukar dams: a highly inspirational and unique event in the history of Icelandic activism. The international protest camps in 2006 at Snæfell, Lindur and Reyðarfjörður in the eastern highlands attracted people from 18 different nationalities. In 2007, the Mosfellsheidi camp targeted Alcan, Century and Reykjavik Energy in the southwest, and the Saving Iceland conference ‘Global consequences of heavy industry’ networked anti-heavy industry and anti-dam movements on five continents.

An ecological movement that has never existed before in Iceland is maturing. The camps and direct actions of the last three years have had a profound effect on Icelandic society by giving people the courage to make their voices heard after years of a repressive political atmosphere. The protests have managed to get the heavy industry issue and its consequences back into focus. Witnessing the tragic destruction of the eastern highlands for the Karahnjukar dams has made many people appalled by the prospect of more dams, and now the effects of geothermal over-exploitation can be sadly witnessed in Hengill.

But we are winning. A number of planned smelter and dam projects have been cancelled. Landsvirkjun has said they are reconsidering selling more energy to the aluminium industry in the southwest. However, other industries such as the energy and pollution-intensive silicon industry are standing in line to pillage Iceland’s natural resources. Iceland is the last great expanse of truly magical wilderness left in Europe. It should really be a cause for celebration and wonder how pristine this strangely vibrant island still remains. The world cannot afford to allow beautiful Iceland to be devastated by corporate greed. Stopping industrialisation and ecological destruction of the last unspoilt country in the west would be a major strategic victory for movements against heavy industrialisation and wilderness destruction.