Rare earths make their way to Colorado’s waterways
Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | September 3, 2021 |

A student collects aquatic insects from the Snake River during a 2015 field trip. (Image by Stephen Cardinale, courtesy of UC Boulder’s Institute for Water and Alpine Research).

New research by a team at the University of Colorado Boulder found that rare earth elements are making their way into the state’s water supplies, driven by changes in climate.


The study, which is the first to look at how rare earth elements move within a watershed that is rich in minerals — the Snake River watershed — was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. According to the document, there is growing concern about REE concentrations because they are not monitored and there are no water quality standards set for them.

The paper is also the first one to dig into how climate change, by altering stream flow and natural weathering processes, is releasing more rare earth elements into streams.

“We documented a concentration range of one to hundreds of micrograms per liter—several orders of magnitude higher than typical for surface waters—with the highest concentrations nearest the headwaters and areas receiving drainage from abandoned mine workings,” the lead author of the study, Garrett Rue, said in a media statement.


THE RESEARCHERS SUGGEST THAT INVESTIGATING AND INVESTING IN TECHNOLOGIES TO RECOVER RARE EARTH ELEMENTS FROM NATURAL WATERS COULD YIELD VALUABLE COMMODITIES AND HELP ADDRESS THE PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH ACID ROCK AND MINE DRAINAGE

Rue and his co-author Diane McKnight also documented that increases in rare earth elements in the Snake River corresponded to warming summer air temperatures, and that rare earth elements are accumulating in insects living in streams at concentrations comparable to other metals such as lead and cadmium shown to be toxic.

“We’re starting to understand that once rare earth elements get in the water, they tend to stay there,” the lead researcher said. “They aren’t removed by traditional treatment processes either, which has implications for reuse and has led some European cities to designate REEs as an emerging contaminant to drinking water supplies. And considering that the Snake River flows directly into Dillion Reservoir, which is Denver’s largest source of stored water, this could be a concern for the future.”

Given these results, Rue and his colleague suggest that investigating and investing in technologies to recover rare earth elements from natural waters could yield valuable commodities and help address the problems associated with acid rock and mine drainage, which are poised to worsen as the climate shifts.

“Rare earth elements are used to make a lot of products. But most of the supply comes from China. So our government has been looking for sources, but at the same time mining has left an indelible mark on the waters of the West,” Rue said. “If we can harvest some of these materials that are already coming into our environment, it might be worthwhile to treat that water and recover these materials at the same time.”
How they did it

To reach their conclusions, the team followed the water quality monitoring process that has been carried out since the 1990s at CU Boulder.

Given the location of the Snake River watershed, it is considered a good natural laboratory for investigating these processes as the area’s pyrite-rich geology allows for acid rock drainage to occur naturally. At the same time, historic mines that disturb large amounts of rocks and soil amp up the process dramatically and cause downstream water pollution.

The Snake River’s Peru Creek part of the watershed has been heavily mined, while the Upper Snake River has not.

What takes place there is that rocks that include sulphide-based minerals, such as pyrite, oxidize when exposed to air and water. The resulting chemical reaction produces sulfuric acid and dissolved metals like iron, which drain into streams. More acidic water can further dissolve heavy metals, like lead, cadmium, and zinc, and as it turns out can carry rare earth elements as well.

“What really controls the mobility of rare earth elements is pH. Acid literally leaches it out of the rocks,” Rue said.

Rue and McKnight also found that both parts of the watershed are now contributing significant amounts of metals downstream, as climate change has brought longer summers and less snow in the winters. Longer, lower stream flows make it easier for metals to leach into the watershed, and concentrate the metals that would otherwise be diluted by snowmelt.

The same processes that mean more heavy metals are finding their way into streams are also acting on rare earth elements.

Obscure precious metal takes center stage for platinum giants

Bloomberg News | September 3, 2021 | 

NOx annihilating nugget. Stock image.

The rise of rhodium, the world’s most expensive precious metal, has made it the No. 1 revenue stream of the biggest platinum miners.


While the metal is well shy of its March peak, rhodium still accounted for 45% of Anglo American Platinum Ltd.’s first-half revenues. That’s more than platinum and palladium put together. For parent Anglo American Plc, the silvery-white metal generated more revenue than the diamonds mined by its De Beers business or the copper it extracts in Chile and Peru.



The scarcity of rhodium — a byproduct of platinum and palladium mining — and its unparalleled ability to curb nitrogen oxides from car exhaust fumes pushed up prices as stricter pollution laws boost demand. In March, it climbed to a record $29,800 an ounce, making it 17 times more valuable than gold.

Originally used for decoration or as corrosion-resistant coating, rhodium has also become the biggest export for South Africa, which produces more than 80% of global supply.

IN SOUTH AFRICAN RAND


“Rhodium prices have retreated somewhat but continue to contribute significantly to revenues particularly for rhodium-rich mines,” said Mandi Dungwa, a mining analyst at Kagiso Asset Management Ltd. in Cape Town.

With rhodium declining more than 40% from its peak, that contribution may not be repeated. Impala Platinum Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Nico Muller expects market tightness to keep the metal above $15,000 an ounce for the next year, but Neal Froneman, his counterpart at Sibanye Stillwater Ltd., expects prices to fall to a more “sustainable level” of about $10,000 over the next two years.

(By Felix Njini, with assistance from Yuliya Fedorinova and Thomas Biesheuvel)

All In by Billie Jean King review – game, set and match

A vivid and inspiring autobiography by the woman who took on the tennis establishment and won

Battle of the sexes ... Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. 

Photograph: Bettmann Archive


Fiona Sturges
Sat 4 Sep 2021 

Billie Jean King learned early that, as a girl who excelled at sport, she wouldn’t always be treated fairly. There was the elementary school teacher who marked her down for using her “superior ability” during playground games, and the tennis official who pulled her, aged 10, from a players’ photo during a California tournament because she was wearing shorts instead of a skirt.

King went on to observe top-ranking teenage boys getting free meals at the canteen of the Los Angeles Tennis Club where she trained, while she and her mother were made to eat the food they had brought from home outside. Later, as a player competing on the international stage, she would see male competitors winning up to eight times the prize money of their female counterparts. “Even if you’re not a born activist,” she writes, “life can damn well make you one.”

King’s memoir ­– written with the sports journalist Johnette Howard and writer Maryanne Vollers – is a vivid and detailed account of her rise to sporting greatness and her struggles to attain equal treatment for women in a shockingly discriminatory sport. She reveals how, in the early 1970s, she forged a path for female players by leading the breakaway movement for the first all-women’s tennis pro tour, despite threats that it would finish her career. Many male players, among them Stan Smith , denounced King’s efforts; the Australian player, Fred Stolle, told her: “No one wants to pay to watch you birds play.” But King was undeterred, persuading eight others, among them Rosemary Casals and Nancy Richey, to sign up to what would become the Virginia Slims Circuit for a token dollar bill. They were called the “Original 9” and their set-up became the basis for the formation of the Women’s Tennis Association three years later. 

King with the Wimbledon trophy following her victory over

 PF Jones in July 1967. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

In 1971, King, who had spent much of the 60s living hand-to-mouth on the measly per diems dispensed during amateur tournaments, earned an unprecedented $100,000; in 1976, Chris Evert’s earnings topped $1m. There were those who felt King’s focus on money was vulgar, but she remained steadfast. As Althea Gibson, the first African American tennis player to win a Grand Slam title and one of King’s biggest inspirations, said: “You can’t eat trophies.”

Elsewhere, it’s with remarkable clarity that King recalls life-changing matches, in some cases walking us through each set. This isn’t as laborious as it sounds. King revels in drama and tension, both in her tennis and in her storytelling; given her status as a record-breaking sportswoman, her occasional lapses into bombast seem forgivable. The build-up to the famous “Battle of the Sexes” match, in which she played against Bobby Riggs, and the circus that surrounded it, is terrifically told. Riggs, a fiftysomething attention-seeker and self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig”, had challenged King to a prize fight in order to prove that women’s tennis was inferior to men’s, and not worthy of investment. Where King spent the weeks before the match training hard and studying Riggs’s game, he spent much of them taunting her in media interviews and setting up endorsement deals. She thrashed him in straight sets.

King’s campaigning went beyond tennis, of course. She marched for women’s liberation alongside Gloria Steinem and, in the face of ferocious criticism, went public about having had an abortion. King also endured intense and unfair scrutiny about her marriage to the lawyer Larry King and her sexuality. For years, she kept quiet about her relationships with women, for fear of blowing up her career (she is now a staunch advocate of the LGBTQ community). While All In contains plenty of sporting highs and lows, it is her reflections on this denial and secrecy that gives it its emotional heft.

King repeatedly lied to her family, colleagues and the media, even after a former girlfriend, Marilyn Barnett, outed her in 1981 by filing a palimony lawsuit. King writes movingly of her denials of homosexuality, which she says were a result of fear, shame and her own internalised homophobia. “It’s a legacy of so many things, including not knowing if you could trust anyone with the information,” she observes. “People in the closet often take consolation in the idea that at least they’re controlling who knows the truth, when the real truth is that the closet is controlling them.” Later she adds: “I didn’t come out completely and wasn’t comfortable in my own skin until I was 51. I wish I could have done it sooner.”

Nonetheless, the courage and stamina it took King to take on a defensive, intractable and often bigoted tennis establishment, and to win, is no small feat, even if it turned out that her biggest battle would be with herself. All In describes a life comprising one epic struggle after another, both on and off court. “But I came through it,” she writes in the epilogue. “I am free.”

All In: An Autobiography is published by Viking (£20). 

Feminists warned about America’s abortion crisis for years. We were written off as hysterical

Why has the effective end of Roe v Wade been met with shock by so many corners of political life?

Supreme court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. ‘This outcome was never in doubt. Trump promised to appoint anti-choice judges. He kept that promise.’ Photograph: Doug Mills/AP

Moira Donegan
Sat 4 Sep 2021 11.00 BST

This was predictable. In fact, it was predicted. The end of Roe v Wade and nationwide protections for abortion rights became likely in 2016, the night that Donald Trump was elected. It became inevitable in 2018, when Anthony Kennedy, the fifth pro-choice vote, retired and handed his seat to Trump to fill. But the end of nationwide legal abortion in America has been coming for decades, and there has been no ambiguity about the appetite for Roe’s overturn on the American right. And crucially, feminists have been sounding the alarm for decades, warning in increasingly desperate terms that gradual erosions of Roe’s protections in the law had led to a rapid and widespread loss of abortion access on the ground.

Perhaps the form of Roe’s eventual downfall was a surprise. Few thought that Roe’s fatal case would be over Texas’s new abortion law, with its privatized enforcement system of bounty-hunting civil suits designed to elide judicial review. And among a sea of legal observers, only Cardozo law professor Kate Shaw seems to have predicted that the court would dispose of a long-established constitutional right in so rushed and perfunctory a proceeding as a late-night order on the shadow docket. But this outcome was never in doubt. Trump promised to appoint antichoice judges. He kept that promise. This week his three appointees – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas – did what all of them know they were put on the court to do. They allowed the first state to outlaw abortion within its borders.

So why has the effective end of Roe v Wade, coming in a one paragraph order in the wee hours of Thursday morning, been met with shock by so many corners of political life? The Republican party’s control of the federal judiciary had left little doubt that those judges most inclined to strip women of their rights would have both the power and the opportunity to do so. And yet politicians, pundits, and legal observers had for years assured the public that the justices would not gut abortion rights, despite the clear evidence that they would. We were assured that the Republicans on the court were less determined to gut Roe than they appeared to be, and that those worried about the future of abortion rights were overreacting.

The court would not gut Roe, we were told by politicians and academics, because they said they wouldn’t. Kavanaugh, the ruddy-faced Trump appointee, had referred to Roe as “important precedent”. That this rather tepid comment was a disingenuous bit of posturing meant to ease his confirmation to the court was evident to everyone. Nevertheless, defenders of the confirmation process implored the public to treat it as if it had been uttered in good faith.

In a speech announcing her decision to vote to confirm Kavanaugh, Senator Susan Collins said that she believed Kavanaugh would not vote to overturn Roe, or to gut it procedurally, because “his views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.” Of course, the court, with Kavanaugh’s help, did effectively overturn Roe “by stealth” – in an unsigned order in the middle of the night.

Of the feminists who opposed his nomination, Collins was dismissive, even patronizing. “We have seen special-interest groups whip their followers into a frenzy by spreading misrepresentations and outright falsehoods about Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record.” She condemned these women’s concerns as “over-the-top rhetoric and distortions”.

The court would not gut Roe, we were told by the legal world, because the justices were too professional. Barrett, the third of Trump’s appointees, had been a member of an antichoice faculty group while a law professor at Notre Dame. She had given a lecture to a Right to Life group; she had signed a letter condemning Roe and its “brutal legacy”. And yet despite Barrett’s extremist and evidently very passionately held views on abortion, people posing as serious told us that we could not know how she would vote on abortion rights, that the opinions and worldviews of judges would somehow not affect their legal judgement. “My personal views don’t have anything to do with the way I would decide cases,” Barrett told Senator Patrick Leahy when she was asked about her lengthy history of anti-abortion advocacy. The statement insulted both Leahy’s intelligence, and ours.

And yet as conservative, antichoice judges consolidated their power, several myths about the court persisted. We were told that the people who looked like rabidly conservative justices were really reasoned moderates; or that at least they would be professional and impartial in their judgements; or that at least the removal of abortion rights would move slowly. These myths were presented as the only serious way to understand the court. Feminist claims that what appeared to be happening really was happening – that the judiciary really had been taken over by antichoice zealots, that the ability of women to control their own bodies and lives would soon be stripped away – were labeled as delusional and silly. Faith in the integrity of the conservative justices was cast as informed, mature, and intelligent. And it was contrasted with the supposed hysteria of feminists, whose passion and fear was taken as a sign of their own delusion, not as an indication of the seriousness of the problem.
Feminist claims that what appeared to be happening really was happening were labeled as delusional and silly

This notion, that the only intelligent response to a threat to women’s rights is to be calm, blasé, and preemptively assured that nothing very bad or important will result, has been weaponized with particular insidiousness over the course of the abortion debate during the past five years. In the halls of power, contempt for abortion rights activists was nearly complete.

After Kennedy’s resignation, the CNN host Brian Stelter took to social media to scold a liberal activist for her fear of a Roe reversal. “We are not ‘a few steps away from the Handmaid’s Tale’,” he wrote. “I don’t think this kind of fear-mongering helps anybody.” Confronted with women opposed to the confirmation of Kavanaugh, Senator Ben Sasse all but rolled his eyes. There had been, he said, “screaming protesters saying ‘women are going to die’ at every hearing for decades.”

The insistence that Roe is not in danger, and that women’s fear is silly, persists even now, after the court has effectively ended Roe. “Now breathe,” wrote the law professor Jonathan Turley in a blogpost urging women’s rights advocates to calm down, as if they were toddlers in the midst of a temper tantrum. “It is ridiculous to say that it was some manufactured excuse for a partisan ruling.”

Is it ridiculous? The public has no real reason to believe that the supreme court is acting in good faith – aside from the repeated assurances of supposed experts whose predictions have usually been wrong. Instead, it was the so-called alarmist feminists, the ones warning about manufactured excuses for partisan attacks on abortion rights, who got their predictions mostly right. Maybe these women are not so ridiculous after all. Maybe it’s time to start listening to them.


Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Thai protesters hit the streets as PM clings to power

Issued on: 04/09/2021 - 

Pro-democracy protesters took to Bangkok's streets after the country's

 prime minister survived a no-confidence vote 

Jack TAYLOR AFP


Bangkok (AFP)

Pro-democracy protesters vented their anger in Bangkok's heavy rain Saturday after Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-cha survived a no-confidence vote in parliament.

More than 300 demonstrators marched in central Bangkok's main shopping mall district carrying red flags and wearing ponchos in the downpour.

"The government should be gone. If things were good why would we come out to protest?" a 28-year-old demonstrator told AFP.

Ahead of the rally, police used shipping containers to block major routes to the advertised protest site at the central Lumphini Park where protesters had planned to march.

There was heavy police presence across the downtown area with riot police and a water cannon truck stationed at the Ratchaprasong intersection near major shopping malls.

This week Thai lawmakers debated an opposition-instigated censure motion about the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and economic management -- Saturday was the third no-confidence motion vote since the 2019 election.

The sluggish rollout of Thailand's vaccination programme and financial pain from restrictions has heaped political pressure on Prayut's government.

The country is reeling from its worst economic performance since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis as well as a deadly third wave of coronavirus infections.

Total case numbers have topped more than 1.2 million with over 12,000 deaths.

Prayut defended his government's handling of the pandemic in parliament earlier this week.

"Thailand’s death rate from COVID-19 is comparatively very low, but we must make sure that there will be no more deaths," Prayut said, adding the decision not to access doses under the global COVAX vaccine equity programme was in Thailand's best interest.

Vaccine supply has been a problem and the country has imported the Chinese-made Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs and received a donation of 1.5 million Pfizer doses from the US after locally produced AstraZeneca vaccines couldn't keep pace.

"Government management of Covid is really bad. My dad is unemployed and my mum got infected despite getting two Sinovac jabs," a 21-year-old male protester told AFP.

Fresh infections tallied almost 16,000 Saturday representing a decrease in recent weeks that has also coincided with a reduction of testing.

In the morning, Prayut and five cabinet ministers clung to power after garnering enough support on the floor of parliament, following a week of speculation some members of the ruling coalition were plotting to withdraw support.

Riot police and water cannon were deployed on Bangkok's streets to block the pro-democracy protests

 Jack TAYLOR AFP

Bangkok has been plagued with regular street protests since late June including clashes between demonstrators and police.

Officers have deployed tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannon while some protesters have retaliated with ping pong bombs and slingshots.

© 2021 AFP

Iran calls on US to stop its addiction to sanctions

Issued on: 04/09/2021 -

Masih Alinejad speaks onstage at a Women in the World Summit 

at the Lincoln Center on April 8, 2016 in New York City 

Jemal Countess GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP


Tehran (AFP)

Iran urged the United States Saturday to stop its addiction to sanctions against the Islamic republic and accused President Joe Biden of following the same "dead end" policies as Donald Trump.

Foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh made his remarks a day after the US Treasury announced financial sanctions against four Iranians accused of planning the kidnapping in the US of an American journalist of Iranian descent.

"Washington must understand that it has no other choice but to abandon its addiction to sanctions and show respect, both in its statements and in its behaviour, towards Iran," Khatibzadeh said in a press release.

On Friday, the Treasury announced sanctions against "four Iranian intelligence operatives" involved in a campaign against Iranian dissidents abroad.

According to a US federal indictment in mid-July, the intelligence officers tried in 2018 to force Masih Alinejad's Iran-based relatives to lure her to a third country to be arrested and taken to Iran to be jailed.

When that failed, they allegedly hired US private investigators to monitor her over the past two years.

Khatibzadeh in July called the American charges "baseless and absurd", referring to them as "Hollywood scenarios".

Under Trump's presidency, Washington unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and six major powers.

The multilateral deal offered Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

It was torpedoed by Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from it in 2018.

Biden has said he wants to reintegrate Washington into the pact, but talks in Vienna that began in April have stalled since the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi won Iran's presidential election in June.

At the end of August, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Biden's administration of making the same demands as his predecessor in talks to revive the accord.

And on Tuesday, Iran's new Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian suggested that the Vienna talks would not resume for two or three months.

Tehran is demanding the lifting of all sanctions imposed or reimposed on it by the US since 2017.

© 2021 AFP

IUCN RED LIST

New project to track endangered species coming back from brink



Issued on: 04/09/2021

The Green status suggests the California condor would have gone extinct in the wild without conservation 

DAVID MCNEW Getty Images North America/Getty Images/AFP/File


Marseille (AFP)

After decades of recording alarming declines in animals and plants, conservation experts have taken a more proactive approach, with a new "Green Status" launched on Saturday, billed as the first global measurement for tracking species recovery.

Since 1964, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed some 138,000 species for its Red List of Threatened Species, a powerful tool to highlight the plight of wildlife facing extinction.

Some 28 percent are currently at risk of vanishing forever.

Its new Green Status will act as a companion to this survival watchlist, looking at the extent to which species are depleted or restored compared to their historical population levels.

The initiative aims "to measure species recoveries in a standardised way, which has never been done before", Green Status co-chair Molly Grace told a news conference Saturday during the IUCN congress in Marseille.

But it also looks to "incentivise conservation action", with evaluations of how well past preservation efforts have worked, as well as projections for how effective future ones will be.

It was born of a realisation that "preventing extinction alone is not enough", said Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford.

The burrowing bettong now exists in just 5 percent of its indigenous range 

TORSTEN BLACKWOOD AFP/File

Beyond the first step of stopping a species from disappearing entirely, "once it's out of danger, what does recovery look like?"

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed to stop losses in the face of rampant habitat destruction, overexploitation and illegal wildlife trade.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species were nearing extinction.

- 'Invisible' work -

The Green status of over 180 species have been assessed so far, although the IUCN hopes to one day to match the tens of thousands on the Red List.

They are classified on a sliding scale: from "fully recovered" through "slightly depleted", "moderately depleted", "largely depleted" and "critically depleted".

When all else has failed, the final listing is "extinct in the wild".

While these categories mirror the Red List rankings, "they're not simply a Red List in reverse", said Grace.

She gave the example of a pocket-sized Australian marsupial, the burrowing bettong, whose numbers have plummeted and which now exists in just five percent of its indigenous range.

Successful conservation efforts have seen populations stabilise, with a Red List rating improving from endangered to near threatened in recent decades.

But Grace said the Green Status assessment underscores that the species is not out of the woods, with a listing of critically depleted that suggests: "We have a long way to go before we recover this species."

The listing also incorporates an assessment of what would have happened if nothing had been done to save a given species.

The California condor, for example, has been classified as critically endangered for three decades, despite major investment in its preservation.

"Some people might think: 'We've been trying to conserve the condor for 30 years, its red list status has been critically endangered for all those 30 years, what is conservation actually doing for this species?'" said Grace.

But she said her team's evaluation of what would have happened without these protection efforts found that it would have gone extinct in the wild.

"What this does is it makes the invisible work of conservation visible. And this is hopefully going to be really powerful in incentivising and justifying the amazing work that conservationists do," said Grace.

© 2021 AFP

Komodo dragon, 2-in-5 shark species lurch towards extinction

Issued on: 04/09/2021 - 

At least 30 percent of the Komodo dragon's habitat is projected to be l

ost in the next 45 years

 Romeo GACAD AFP/File

Marseille (AFP)

Trapped on island habitats made smaller by rising seas, Indonesia's Komodo dragons were listed as "endangered" on Saturday, in an update of the wildlife Red List that also warned overfishing threatens nearly two-in-five sharks with extinction.

About 28 percent of the 138,000 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are now at risk of vanishing in the wild forever, as the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world deepens.

But the latest update of the Red List for Threatened Species also highlights the potential for restoration, with four commercially-fished tuna species pulling back from a slide towards extinction after a decade of efforts to curb over-exploitation.

The most spectacular recovery was seen in Atlantic bluefin tuna, which leapt from "endangered" across three categories to the safe zone of "least concern".

The species -- a mainstay of high-end sushi in Japan -- was last assessed in 2011.

"This shows that conservation works -- when we do the right thing, a species can increase," said Jane Smart, global director of IUCN's Biodiversity Conservation Group.

"But we must remain vigilant. This doesn't mean we can have a free-for-all of fishing for these tuna species."

- 'Clarion call' -

A key message from the IUCN Congress, taking place in the French city of Marseille, is that disappearing species and the destruction of ecosystems are existential threats on a par with global warming.

And climate change itself is threatening the futures of many species, particularly endemic animals and plants that live on small islands or in certain biodiversity hotspots.

Komodo dragons -- the largest living lizards -- are found only in the World Heritage-listed Komodo National Park and neighbouring Flores.

The species "is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate change" said the IUCN: rising sea levels are expected to shrink its tiny habitat at least 30 percent over the next 45 years.

Nowhere to run: Komodo dragons have a limited habitat 

JUNI KRISWANTO AFP/File

Outside of protected areas, the fearsome throwbacks are also rapidly losing ground as humanity's footprint expands.

"The idea that these prehistoric animals have moved one step closer to extinction due in part to climate change is terrifying," said Andrew Terry, Conservation Director at the Zoological Society of London.

Their decline is a "clarion call for nature to be placed at the heart of all decision making" at crunch UN climate talks in Glasgow, he added.

- 'An alarming rate' -

The most comprehensive survey of sharks and rays ever undertaken, meanwhile, revealed that 37 percent of 1,200 species evaluated are now classified as directly threatened with extinction, falling into one of three categories: "vulnerable", "endangered" or "critically endangered".

That's a third more species at risk than only seven years ago, said Simon Fraser University Professor Nicholas Dulvy, lead author of a study published on Monday underpinning the Red List assessment.

"The conservation status of the group as a whole continues to deteriorate, and overall risk of extinction is rising at an alarming rate," he told AFP.

The Earth's mass extinctions Alain BOMMENEL AFP

Five species of sawfish -- whose serrated snouts get tangled in cast off fishing gear -- and the iconic shortfin mako shark are among those most threatened.

Chondrichthyan fish, a group made up mainly of sharks and rays, "are important to ecosystems, economies and cultures," Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International and co-author of the upcoming study, told AFP.

"By not sufficiently limiting catch, we're jeopardising ocean health and squandering opportunities for sustainable fishing, tourism, traditions and food security in the long term."

A shortfin mako shark being fished for sport in The United States in 2017

 Maddie Meyer GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

The Food and Agriculture Organization reports some 800,000 tonnes of sharks caught -- intentionally or opportunistically -- each year, but research suggests the true figure is two to four times greater.

- Conservation tracker -

The IUCN on Saturday also officially launched its "green status" -- the first global standard for assessing species recovery and measuring conservation impacts.

While Atlantic Bluefin tuna has seen a dramatic recovery, Pacific Bluefin continues to be critically endangered

 Pau BARRENA AFP/File

"It makes the invisible work of conservation visible," Molly Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford and Green Status co-chair, told a press conference on Saturday.

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species are on the brink of extinction -- raising the spectre that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction event in 500 million years.

The IUCN Congress is widely seen as a testing ground for a UN treaty -- to be finalised at a summit in Kunming, China next May -- to save nature.

"We would like to see that plan call for the halt to biodiversity loss by 2030," said Smart.

A cornerstone of the new global deal could be setting aside 30 percent of Earth's land and oceans as protected areas, she added.

© 2021 AFP

Nearly 30% of 138,000 assessed species face extinction, says IUCN report

Issued on: 04/09/2021 -

Text by: FRANCE 24Follow|

Video by: Valérie DEKIMPE


Nearly 30 percent of the 138,374 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its survival watchlist are now at risk of vanishing in the wild forever, as the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world deepens.

Trapped on island habitats made smaller by rising seas, Indonesia's Komodo dragons were listed as "endangered" on Saturday, in an update of the wildlife Red List that also warned overfishing threatens nearly two-in-five sharks with extinction.

But the latest update of the Red List for Threatened Species also highlights the potential for restoration, with four commercially fished tuna species pulling back from a slide towards extinction after a decade of efforts to curb overexploitation.

The most spectacular recovery was seen in the Atlantic bluefin tuna, which leapt from "endangered" across three categories to the safe zone of "least concern".

The species - a mainstay of high-end sushi in Japan - was last assessed in 2011.

"These Red List assessments demonstrate just how closely our lives and livelihoods are intertwined with biodiversity," IUCN Director General Bruno Oberle said in a statement.

'Clarion call'

A key message from the IUCN Congress, taking place in the French city of Marseille, is that disappearing species and the destruction of ecosystems are no less existential threats than global warming.

At the same time, climate change itself is casting a darker shadow than ever before on the futures of many species, particularly endemic animals and plants that live uniquely on small islands or in certain biodiversity hotspots.

Komodo dragons -- the world's largest living lizards -- are found only in the World Heritage-listed Komodo National Park and neighbouring Flores.

The species "is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate change" said the IUCN: rising sea levels are expected to shrink its tiny habitat at least 30 percent over the next 45 years.

Outside of protected areas, the fearsome throwbacks are also rapidly losing ground as humanity's footprint expands.

"The idea that these prehistoric animals have moved one step closer to extinction due in part to climate change is terrifying," said Andrew Terry, Conservation Director at the Zoological Society of London.

Their decline is a "clarion call for nature to be placed at the heart of all decision making" at crunch UN climate talks in Glasgow, he added.

'An alarming rate'

The most comprehensive survey of sharks and rays ever undertaken, meanwhile, revealed that 37 percent of 1,200 species evaluated are now classified as directly threatened with extinction, falling into one of three categories: "vulnerable," "endangered," or "critically endangered".

That's a third more species at risk than only seven years ago, said Simon Fraser University Professor Nicholas Dulvy, lead author of a study published on Monday underpinning the Red List assessment.

"The conservation status of the group as a whole continues to deteriorate, and overall risk of extinction is rising at an alarming rate," he told AFP.

Five species of sawfish - whose serated snouts get tangled in cast off fishing gear - and the iconic shortfin mako shark are among those most threatened.

Chondrichthyan fish, a group made up mainly of sharks and rays, "are important to ecosystems, economies and cultures," Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International and co-author of the upcoming study, told AFP.

"By not sufficiently limiting catch, we're jeopardising ocean health and squandering opportunities for sustainable fishing, tourism, traditions and food security in the long term."

The Food and Agriculture Organization reports some 800,000 tonnes of sharks caught -- intentionally or opportunistically -- each year, but research suggests the true figure is two to four times greater.

Conservation tracker

The IUCN on Saturday also officially launched its "green status" -- the first global standard for assessing species recovery and measuring conservation impacts.

"It makes the invisible work of conservation visible," Molly Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford and Green Status co-chair, said at a press conference on Saturday.

The new yardstick measures the extent to which species are depleted or recovered compared to their historical population levels, and assesses the effectiveness of past and potential future conservation actions.

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species are on the brink of extinction - raising the spectre that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction event in 500 million years.

"The red list status shows that we're on the cusp of the sixth extinction event," the IUCN's Head of Red List Unit Craig Hilton-Taylor told AFP.

"If the trends carry on going upward at that rate, we'll be facing a major crisis soon."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

WHY SOME SCIENTISTS THINK CONSCIOUSNESS PERSISTS AFTER DEATH

We should not assume that pepole who are near death do not know what we are saying

Electrocardiogram in hospital surgery operating emergency room showing patient heart rate with blur team of surgeons background

 SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Electrocardiogram in hospital surgery operating emergency room showing patient heart rate with blur team of surgeons background

A very significant change that happened in the last century or so has been the ability of science professionals to see what happens when people are thinking, especially under traumatic conditions.

It was not a good moment for materialist theories. Here is one finding (there are many others): Death is a process, usually, not simply an event.

Consciousness can persists after clinical death. A more accurate way of putting things might be that the brain is able to host consciousness for a short period after clinical death. Some notes on recent findings:

The short answer is, probably, yes:

Recent studies have shown that animals experience a surge in brain activity in the minutes after death. And people in the first phase of death may still experience some form of consciousness, [Sam] Parnia said. Substantial anecdotal evidence reveals that people whose hearts stopped and then restarted were able to describe accurate, verified accounts of what was going on around them, he added.

“They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working; they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them,” he explained. According to Parnia, these recollections were then verified by medical and nursing staff who were present at the time and were stunned to hear that their patients, who were technically dead, could remember all those details.

MINDY WEISBERGER, “ARE ‘FLATLINERS’ REALLY CONSCIOUS AFTER DEATH?” 

AT LIVESCIENCE (OCTOBER 4, 2017)

Death is probably, in most cases, a process rather than a single event:

Time of death is considered when a person has gone into cardiac arrest. This is the cessation of the electrical impulse that drive the heartbeat. As a result, the heart locks up. The moment the heart stops is considered time of death. But does death overtake our mind immediately afterward or does it slowly creep in?

Some scientists have studied near death experiences (NDEs) to try to gain insights into how death overcomes the brain. What they’ve found is remarkable, a surge of electricity enters the brain moments before brain death. One 2013 study out of the University of Michigan, which examined electrical signals inside the heads of rats, found they entered a hyper-alert state just before death.

PHILIP PERRY, “AFTER DEATH, YOU’RE AWARE THAT YOU’VE DIED, SAY SCIENTISTS” AT BIGTHINK (OCTOBER 24, 2017)

Despite claims, current science does not do a very good job of explaining human experience just before death:

Researchers have also explained near-death experiences via cerebral anoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain. One researcher found air pilots who experienced unconsciousness during rapid acceleration described near-death experience-like features, such as tunnel vision. Lack of oxygen may also trigger temporal lobe seizures which causes hallucinations. These may be similar to a near-death experience.

But the most widespread explanation for near-death experiences is the dying brain hypothesis. This theory proposes that near-death experiences are hallucinations caused by activity in the brain as cells begin to die. As these occur during times of crisis, this would explain the stories survivors recount. The problem with this theory, though plausible, is that it fails to explain the full range of features that may occur during near-death experiences, such as why people have out-of-body experiences.

NEAL DAGNALL AND KEN DRINKWATER, “ARE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES HALLUCINATIONS? EXPERTS EXPLAIN THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS PUZZLING PHENOMENON” AT THE CONVERSATION (DECEMBER 4, 2018)

Such explanations are a classic case of adapting a materialist hypothesis to fit whatever has happened. They don’t explain, for example, terminal lucidity, where many people suddenly gain clarity about life.

Research medic Sam Parnia found, for example, that, of 2000 patients with cardiac arrest,

Some died during the process. But of those who survived, up to 40 percent had a perception of having some form of awareness during the time when they were in a state of cardiac arrest. Yet they weren’t able to specify more details.

CATHY CASSATA, “WE MAY STILL BE CONSCIOUS AFTER WE DIE” AT HEALTHLINE (SEPTEMBER 24, 2018) THE PAPER REQUIRES A SUBSCRIPTION.

So we should not assume that people who are on the way out cannot understand us. Maybe they can — and would like to hear that they are still loved and will be missed.

You may also wish to read: Do people suddenly gain clarity about life just before dying?

 New Brunswick

Province leaves bargaining table as strike votes loom for thousands of public-sector workers

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Higgs says CUPE 'chose not to' have meaningful discussion, CUPE says province 'refused' to respond to proposal

Jacques Poitras · CBC News · Posted: Sep 03, 2021 

CUPE New Brunswick president Steve Drost, seen with dozens of bargaining team members. By next week, more than 22,000 workers from 10 locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees expect to hold strike votes. (Jacques Poitras/CBC News)

Crunch time is approaching for Premier Blaine Higgs and his relationship with public-sector unions in New Brunswick.

By next week, more than 22,000 workers from 10 locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees expect to hold strike votes.

And if deals aren't signed, they could be walking off the job before the end of September.

"It would have quite a serious impact on the province. It would basically, after a number of days, shut the province down," said CUPE New Brunswick president Steve Drost.

"If these groups decide to pull their services … it would have quite a detrimental impact on the province."

Workers in 10 locals without contracts

The 10 union locals include workers in the health care, education, transportation and agricultural sectors, as well as social workers, jail guards, court stenographers, and staff at Worksafe NB, the New Brunswick Community Colleges and N.B. Liquor.

All have been without contracts since between 2016 and 2019.

"These workers never wanted to take strike action, but they feel they've been backed into a corner," Drost said.

Earlier this year, CUPE gave the province 100 days to reach agreements. That deadline expires Sept. 7.

Union and government bargaining teams have been in separate meeting rooms in a Fredericton hotel since Tuesday, passing proposals back and forth.

On Friday morning, the province left the bargaining table, CUPE said in an email to reporters.

The union said government negotiators "refused to respond" to a proposal it delivered Thursday night and did not want to negotiate unless CUPE agreed to concessions.

In a statement, Higgs said CUPE had refused to budge from a demand for five-per-cent annual wage increases over four years "and was planning strike votes for next week while we were at the table this week.

"The union had the opportunity to engage in meaningful negotiations but chose not to on all subjects, which is very disappointing," he said.

Higgs said the union's demand would have cost $158 million, while the province's latest counter-offer would have cost $71 million.

Premier Blaine Higgs has said wage restraint was necessary because COVID-19 pushed the province into a precarious financial position. (Jon Collicott/CBC)

Pandemic put pressure on finances: Higgs

Last December, Higgs said he would ask public-sector unions to agree to four-year contracts with no wage increase in one year and one-per-cent wage increases in each of the three remaining years.

He said wage restraint was necessary because COVID-19 had pushed the province into a precarious financial position.

• Unions call out premier on wage freeze plan 

This year's provincial budget projected a deficit of $244.8 million. The government had planned to release its first-quarter financial update on Thursday but that was later postponed.

Drost said years of wage increases below the pace of the cost of living have forced many public employees to take on second jobs or leave their jobs altogether. Others can't keep up with rents that are rising far faster than their salaries, he said.

Centralized wage negotiation process requested

In August, Higgs asked the CUPE locals to agree to a centralized wage negotiation process. All 10 locals are in talks with provincial negotiators to try to reach a single wage template for all their collective agreements.

If that happens, they'd then finalize the other non-wage terms of each contract individually.

• 6,000 nurses, health-care workers reject tentative contracts with N.B. government

Drost said last week the province proposed a new six-year wage package with one-per-cent increases in each of the first four years followed by two-per-cent increases in the fifth and sixth years.

He said that was "quite an insult" because it was identical to the package recently rejected by the New Brunswick Nurses Union.

Higgs said Friday that the province had made a new offer of annual increases of 1.25 per cent over four years and then two per cent in the fifth and sixth years.

But in return he wanted CUPE to agree to concessions, including converting members' pensions to the shared-risk model used elsewhere in the civil service and transferring about 100 union members to management positions.

The statement also said the province offered an extra 2.5 per cent wage increase if members agreed to give up a retirement allowance that now exists.

The premier's statement says contingency plans are in place if union locals opt to strike.

WORKERS COOPERATIVE

A Tea Garden Run By Its Workers: What Was and What Could Have Been

The story of the Sonali tea estate in the Dooars of north Bengal is a sobering reminder of the capacities of labour power and the forces forever plotting to destroy it.

The Sonali tea estate in the Dooars of north Bengal. Photo: Rupam Deb


Rupam Deb

September 4, 2021, marks the 47th anniversary of a possibility that was squandered. In a nondescript corner of North Bengal, abandoned tea workers proved that an alternative future was possible. This is the story of a certain past that still holds the key to the present.

It has been pieced together thanks to the accounts of Mattu Oraon, one of the three surviving members of the original cooperative, professor Sharit Bhowmick, and others including Tapan Deb, Ram Avatar Sharma, and Chandan Sengupta. I am especially grateful to the July-September 1995 edition of Bartika, edited by Mahashweta Devi.

§

The Dooars, literally meaning ‘doors’, are the piedmont areas in North Bengal at the edge of the mighty Himalayas. They are carpeted with tea gardens for miles at a stretch. One such tea garden is the Sonali garden.

To the south of Sonali flows the Teesta. Its eastward perimeter is flanked by the Gheesh river and the west by Leesh. Both are dry riverbeds except in the monsoons, when they turn into raging torrents. Moving past an Army camp, we enter Sonali, a garden without an operational factory.



A board pointing to the tea estate in the Dooars of north Bengal. Photo: Rupam Deb

Birenchandra Ghosh of Jalpaiguri took over the garden in 1955, naming it after his daughter Sonali. Before that, it was the out division of the Bagrakote Tea Company and was called the Shaogaon tea estate.

Apart from a few, the workers are all of Oraon origin. The tribe settled in the Dooars in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Bleeding from heavy debt, Biren Ghosh sold the estate to one Khemka ostensibly concentrated on financially draining the garden of what remained. On September 24, 1973, Khemka fled, leaving behind Rs 3 lakhs as payment for the non-plucking season and Rs 1 lakh more as provident fund.

When the garden workers went to Khemka’s address in Calcutta, he wrote to them, “I don’t want to run the garden, the workers can run it.” A few days passed until one night the workers sat to figure out their and the garden’s fates. The story goes that a woman worker spoke up at the meeting, saying they must go to Jalpaiguri to seek support.

They acted promptly. On December 10, 1973, they marched barefoot across the Teesta towards Jalpaiguri. They spent the night in the open at Raipur garden and sat for two whole days at the verandah of the Jalpaiguri court. Their slogan was, “Khoon paseena jiska, cha bagan uska” (‘our blood, our sweat, our tea garden’).

Finally the Deputy Commissioner emerged to say that the owner had not renewed the lease for the garden and hence the ownership of the garden technically would be transferred to government. The DM added that the workers could pluck leaves by themselves and sell them – the government would not stand in the way.

Also read: The Bitter Plight of Bengal’s Tea Garden Workers

Upon their return, the workers formed a committee to pluck and sell produce. The first to purchase from them were Duncan’s, at a meagre 60 paise per kilogram. The wages the committee could afford was a meagre 12 annas instead of the earlier Rs 3. The workers subsisted on roots, leaves, jackfruit, tea flower and whatever they could hunt from the adjacent wilderness – rats, rabbits, or fowl.

But they persisted.

In time they considered the possibility of building a cooperative in place of the committee. In the lead was Chinmay Ghosh of the CPI, workers’ leader Simon Oraon and Professor Sharit Bhawmik.

Additional Labour Commissioners N.C.Kundu and Ramkrishna Saha, along with District Magistrate Dilip Raut were all supportive. The assistant registrar of cooperative societies was a young man, N.K. Maity. The latter facilitated the district-level formalities and got the Cooperative Inspector to the garden for a general assembly to discuss the formation of the cooperative.

Chinmay Ghosh was the promoter and the assembly was presided by the badababu of the garden, Rebati Mohan Saha. By the end of the assembly, the workers unanimously passed the decision to constitute themselves as a cooperative. Thirty two of them signed on the document and submitted the application on August 10, 1974. And finally on September 4, 1974 they formed the cooperative under the ownership of the workers.

They chose not to use the earlier name. Thus the Saongaon Tea and Allied Plantation Workers Cooperative Society Limited was born. However, nationally, it would be forever known as the “Sonali cooperative”.


The share certificate of the Saongaon Tea & Allied Plantation Workers’ Co-operative Society Ltd. Photo: Rupam Deb

There were many challenges. To start with, how would the work be organised?

In the past there was a hierarchical system of manager, assistant manager, garden babu, munshi, dafadar, and under them the “coolies”. This was inherited from the British. But as soon as the cooperative was born in the hands of the workers, the morning whistle fell silent and so did the coarse orders of the dafadars. Workers started on their own, early in the morning. While the committee was preparing to transition into a cooperative, women workers had already decided on the division of labour and how the work would be organised. The decisions were passed on to the men to follow.

The owner had fled with all available vehicles, so they started with bullock carts and cycles. This soon picked pace, and the workers did not turn back. Leaving behind the ‘garden babu-garden sardar’ model, for the first time in independent India, both male and female workers were paid equal wages.


This was a couple of years before even the Union government made a legislation to that effect. Impressed at this effort, the All India Women’s Federation gifted 10,000 multivitamin tablets to the workers.

In the plucking season, a worker would usually get a 7 paise incentive for every extra kilogram above their usual work. The cooperative, however, gave 10 paise, and in some time raised it to 15 paise per kilogram – double the amount any other garden gave at the time.

While other gardens faltered even with the stipulated Rs 3 wage, the cooperative did not fail. It also gave, as per the Plantation Labour Act, umbrellas, aprons, sweaters, quilts and handkerchiefs. The cooperative members, it is said, even came to buy samples of umbrellas from Siliguri to take them back and let the workers decide which ones they would like. By then, the cooperative had acquired quite a bit of fame and the shop owner treated them with cold drinks and paan.

In 1975, the cooperative took a loan of Rs 40,000 and purchased a vehicle worth Rs 56,000. They also managed to invest in a tractor worth Rs 64,000. The workers themselves repaired the roads that had remained unattended for years.

In 1976, the cooperative planted on an extra 10 acres of land and took annual production to 10,43,000 kilogram by 1977. This was quite the leap from the 8,50,000 kilogram that the garden produced before.


Women workers of Sonali tea garden, Dooars. Photo: Sandip Saha.

But this was not enough for the Saongaon Cooperative. They started educating women workers and kicked off a cooperative milk production unit, along with plucking activities. In its functioning, the cooperative turned the privately owned tea garden model on its head.

Senior manager of adjacent Lakkhipara garden, one Greemer, arrived at the garden just to witness these momentous developments in Sonali. To his surprise he found that garden ran like clockwork even without any garden sardars. He told the garden leadership, “In my garden, absenteeism is a big issue. But I see it is not an issue here. If you give me a job here, I will happily come here and work.”

But this golden era did not last long.

The first attack descended upon the garden in the garb of legalities.

A case was registered by the United Bank of India against the garden over an outstanding loan. In 1976, the court passed a verdict in favour of UBI and ordered the garden owner, Khemka, to pay UBI Rs 2 lakhs.

But the garden management not only did not comply with the court’s orders but seeing the garden running smoothly under the cooperative society, attempted to take back the tea garden.

In 1977, UBI filed a case in the Calcutta high court, challenging the registration of the workers’ cooperative. With the support of the district administration the garden stayed at the hands of the workers from 1974 till July 9, 1978. The next day by a temporary order of the high court, a receiver, advocate Swapan Kumar Mullick who was also the lawyer of the Khemkas, was appointed at the garden.

The workers still believed that they would emerge victorious, given that a Left Front government had come to rule the state following the election in the previous year. But when the receiver entered the garden with the 10 truckloads of armed police, the so-called “workers’ party” which was now in power, looked the other way.


An ICDS centre in ruins at the Sonali tea garden. Photo: Rupam Deb

Swiftly, the garden was turned into a police camp and Section 144 was invoked. In 1976, there were several proposals floated by Cooperative Minister Atish Singh and the Cooperative Secretary, pleading for the cooperative to be allowed to pay back the loan amount to the bank slowly over the years. But those came to use, even under Left rule.

And so, cooperative leaders had to abscond for many years to avoid police. Meanwhile, the receiver appointed one Radheshyam Agarwal, a petrol pump owner from Malbazar, as agent to manage the garden’s affairs. The remaining members of the cooperative society tell this author that behind all of these anti-worker moves was Parimal Mitra, whose beginnings were as a working class leader and who was then the forest minister in the Left Front government.

The final order of the high court on September 13, 1978, went in favour of the workers’ cooperative. But it also gave the receiver a month in his role, within which time he approached the Supreme Court on the matter.


Supreme Court overturned the high court’s order on February 26, 1979, and gave three months to the receiver to continue in his position. Even after the receiver left, the agent Radheshyam stayed on with the former owner’s support and the tussle continued with the cooperative.

Right before the festive season in autumn, a small demonstration by workers led to a severe crackdown on the workers, involving police action with lathicharge, tear gas and bullets. Even though they were booked against bailable charges, bail was denied to the workers. Almost the whole of the cooperative board was put behind bars. Suspensions and retrenchments followed. Each worker had no fewer than seven to eight cases registered against him or her – milk theft, wood theft, tea leaf theft, death threats, dacoity. All were fictitious.

Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court said that ownership of the land was disputed. The high court was ordered to resolve the case and asked the state government to take over the running of the garden till the matter was disposed.

The West Bengal Tea Development Corporation and its workers thus entered the garden and put in honest effort to bring it back to its feet. Workers once again started getting their wages and provident fund amounts regularly. But Radheshyam’s son Rajesh Agarwal continued in his attempts to usurp the garden, and reportedly was not above using muscle power.

Also read: Conversations in a Tea Garden Ahead of the West Bengal Elections

Cut to 2005, and once again, the high court removed the WBTDC and appointed two receivers, who handed over charge to Rajesh Agarwal. Aided by the state government’s apathy and the exhausting length of judicial procedure, the final verdict came in 2007. The management of the garden was passed to Rajesh Agarwal, ending what was once a strong example of labour power.

On November 22, 2014, after not having been paid wages for three months, angry garden workers allegedly brutally murdered Rajesh Agarwal in front of the garden office.

The garden was shut for two years and finally reopened in the hands of a new Siliguri-based owner. At present, workers receive Rs 193 daily instead of the stipulated Rs 202. In several sections, tea plants have been uprooted and sold off. In 2018, through an RTI, this author got to know that the owners have the lease till 2035. The rent and cess value, payable to the West Bengal government, amounts to Rs 6,21,128. Outstanding lease amounts to nearly Rs 15 lakhs.


Mattu Oraon with a picture of the late Simon Oraon. Photo: Rupam Deb

Only three of the erstwhile members of the original cooperative are alive now. One of them is the then vice-chairman of the Cooperative, Mattu Oraon. Remembering another prominent leader of the cooperative, Simon Oroan, he said, “At the time, CPIM leaders would say that if workers become owners themselves, how will class struggle be sharpened? Actually, they did not want this plan to succeed as a successful cooperative would have inspired similar models across the Dooars.”


Mattu Oraon said that the most influenced would have been the adjacent Rupali garden which was under CPIM leader Parimal Mitra’s influence. “But for as long as the crisis in the gardens continue, the relevance and significance of the Sonali struggle will stay alive.”

Rupam Deb is a ground activist and student based in north Bengal.