Extract from The Guardian
Representatives from Wangan and Jagalingou people meet executives in
London in push to persuade financiers to snub project on group’s
ancestral land.
A group of Indigenous Australians
has urged Standard Chartered to rule out funding a massive coal mine on
their ancestral lands in a meeting with executives in London.
Representatives of the Wangan and Jagalingou people travelled to the bank’s headquarters on Friday, as part of a 24,000-mile (39,000 km) round-the-world trip aimed at persuading some of the world’s most powerful financial institutions to steer clear of the controversial mining project.
The Wangan and Jagalingou argue that the A$16.5bn (£8.2bn) Carmichael mine, potentially one of the largest coal mines in the world, would devastate ancestral territory in Queensland’s nature-rich Galilee basin.
Standard Chartered, one of the UK’s largest banks with a business model that largely focuses on Africa and Asia, is advising Adani, the Indian conglomerate hoping to build the mine.
Adrian Burragubba, a Wangan and Jagalingou elder, called on the bank not to fund the project. “It is going to have a terrible impact on our people,” he said. “We are the original people and we say no. All of our people are saying ‘Leave that area alone’ because it is sacred and it is vital to the balance of the whole ecosystem.
“[The land] was given to us by our ancestors who have been there for over 100,000 years looking after that land. We are not about to give it up for Adani to destroy and decimate and totally obliterate and fracture the whole environment forever.”
Burragubba is on a whistlestop tour of some of the world’s biggest financial institutions. He has already taken his message to Wall Street at meetings with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, followed by a stop in Washington to see the US Export Import Bank, the US government agency which is one of Adani’s biggest hopes for a loan. Next week, the group goes to UBS and Credit Suisse in Zurich.
A total of 11 banks have so far distanced themselves from the project, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays.
Murrawah Johnson, 20, who is Burragubba’s niece, took time out from revising for her university finals to meet the bankers.
“As a young woman it is my duty to protect the land and our people and our children,” she said. “I am not going to give that up for a mining company to profit from the destruction and devastation of my land, leaving me with nothing to pass on to my children and future generations.”
The Wangan and Jagalingou people, who have a native title claim to over 30,000 sq km of central Queensland, recently lodged a legal bid to overturn a decision that clears the way for the Carmichael mine.
Adani argues that it has the support of the Wangan and Jagalingou people and claims that Burragubba does not represent them. Burragubba responded: “I come from there, I don’t come from anywhere else.”
He was one of three named applicants in the Wangan and Jagalingou case at Australia’s national native title tribunal.
Standard Chartered has promised to review its involvement in the Carmichael mine, amid concerns from green campaigners that the project would threaten the Great Barrier Reef and stymie efforts to keep global warming below the widely agreed “safe limit” of 2C.
The bank maintains that it is not funding the mine, despite court testimony from a senior executive at Adani’s Australian mining subsidiary that Standard Chartered had lent it $680m (£448m) for the project.
Julien Vincent, director of the fossil-fuel divestment group Market Forces, who also attended Friday’s meeting, described the Standard Chartered review as meaningless.
While stressing that the latest talks were constructive, he said Standard Chartered had failed to explain the $680m loan. “I am confused. Either what comes out of the Queensland land court is incorrect or there has been a huge failure of process.”
He hopes Standard Chartered’s new chief executive, Bill Winters, who started on Wednesday, will look again: “It has got to be treated as an opportunity to take a fresh approach.”
A Standard Chartered spokesman declined to discuss the meeting in detail: “It was a private meeting. We listened to Adrian Burragubba’s concerns and felt it was a constructive discussion.”
The bank’s head of corporate affairs, Stephen Atkinson, led the meeting for the bank. Burragubba said they were heard respectfully, adding that he felt comfortable the bank was going to do something.
At the meeting Burragubba played the didgeridoo, a performance he repeated outside the bank’s gleaming glass and steel headquarters in the City. “When I play this instrument, it is like playing the rhythm of the land of Australia, the animals, the birds and all those things that are unique to Australia.”
Representatives of the Wangan and Jagalingou people travelled to the bank’s headquarters on Friday, as part of a 24,000-mile (39,000 km) round-the-world trip aimed at persuading some of the world’s most powerful financial institutions to steer clear of the controversial mining project.
The Wangan and Jagalingou argue that the A$16.5bn (£8.2bn) Carmichael mine, potentially one of the largest coal mines in the world, would devastate ancestral territory in Queensland’s nature-rich Galilee basin.
Standard Chartered, one of the UK’s largest banks with a business model that largely focuses on Africa and Asia, is advising Adani, the Indian conglomerate hoping to build the mine.
Adrian Burragubba, a Wangan and Jagalingou elder, called on the bank not to fund the project. “It is going to have a terrible impact on our people,” he said. “We are the original people and we say no. All of our people are saying ‘Leave that area alone’ because it is sacred and it is vital to the balance of the whole ecosystem.
“[The land] was given to us by our ancestors who have been there for over 100,000 years looking after that land. We are not about to give it up for Adani to destroy and decimate and totally obliterate and fracture the whole environment forever.”
Burragubba is on a whistlestop tour of some of the world’s biggest financial institutions. He has already taken his message to Wall Street at meetings with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, followed by a stop in Washington to see the US Export Import Bank, the US government agency which is one of Adani’s biggest hopes for a loan. Next week, the group goes to UBS and Credit Suisse in Zurich.
A total of 11 banks have so far distanced themselves from the project, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays.
Murrawah Johnson, 20, who is Burragubba’s niece, took time out from revising for her university finals to meet the bankers.
“As a young woman it is my duty to protect the land and our people and our children,” she said. “I am not going to give that up for a mining company to profit from the destruction and devastation of my land, leaving me with nothing to pass on to my children and future generations.”
The Wangan and Jagalingou people, who have a native title claim to over 30,000 sq km of central Queensland, recently lodged a legal bid to overturn a decision that clears the way for the Carmichael mine.
Adani argues that it has the support of the Wangan and Jagalingou people and claims that Burragubba does not represent them. Burragubba responded: “I come from there, I don’t come from anywhere else.”
He was one of three named applicants in the Wangan and Jagalingou case at Australia’s national native title tribunal.
Standard Chartered has promised to review its involvement in the Carmichael mine, amid concerns from green campaigners that the project would threaten the Great Barrier Reef and stymie efforts to keep global warming below the widely agreed “safe limit” of 2C.
The bank maintains that it is not funding the mine, despite court testimony from a senior executive at Adani’s Australian mining subsidiary that Standard Chartered had lent it $680m (£448m) for the project.
Julien Vincent, director of the fossil-fuel divestment group Market Forces, who also attended Friday’s meeting, described the Standard Chartered review as meaningless.
While stressing that the latest talks were constructive, he said Standard Chartered had failed to explain the $680m loan. “I am confused. Either what comes out of the Queensland land court is incorrect or there has been a huge failure of process.”
He hopes Standard Chartered’s new chief executive, Bill Winters, who started on Wednesday, will look again: “It has got to be treated as an opportunity to take a fresh approach.”
A Standard Chartered spokesman declined to discuss the meeting in detail: “It was a private meeting. We listened to Adrian Burragubba’s concerns and felt it was a constructive discussion.”
The bank’s head of corporate affairs, Stephen Atkinson, led the meeting for the bank. Burragubba said they were heard respectfully, adding that he felt comfortable the bank was going to do something.
At the meeting Burragubba played the didgeridoo, a performance he repeated outside the bank’s gleaming glass and steel headquarters in the City. “When I play this instrument, it is like playing the rhythm of the land of Australia, the animals, the birds and all those things that are unique to Australia.”
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