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A series of emails made public by Wikileaks shows that activists opposing Adani Group’s $12 billion Carmichael coal mine and rail project in Queensland, Australia have been receiving funding from an American organization and were not keen to disclose who was financing their activities.
Although the electronic correspondence dates back to 2015, it was circulated this week as part of the electoral battle taking place in the United States. The logic behind the move was that a couple of the emails were forwarded, at the time, to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
Podesta received the emails from Herbert Sandler, founder of the Sandler Foundation. This U.S.-based charitable trust is one of the main funders for the Sunrise Project in Australia, which ran an intense campaign against the Carmichael mine.
Sunrise’s head and former Greenpeace activist John Hepburn told The Guardian that he didn’t want to disclose his donors because that could trigger attacks from the mining industry.
He also posted a statement on the NGOs website saying that “it is no surprise that the ongoing expansion of coal mining in Australia is on the radar of Clinton’s most senior advisor.”
If built, Carmichael would be Australia’s largest coal mine (Image from archives).
“What a week!”
The emails show the groups discussing their victory over Adani, after the project was temporarily halted due to some delays in approvals and legal challenges.
“Wow. What a huge week. The Adani Carmichael mine and the whole Galilee Basin fossil fuel industrial complex is in its death throes,” Hepburn wrote to funders and colleagues.
Hepburn went on to say that he was convinced the federal court’s decision to stop the project alleging that the environment minister, Greg Hunt, failed to consider all departmental advice on protecting two vulnerable species when approving it, was only going to spur the federal government’s and the mining industry’s resolve to attack conservationists.
“The industry have also dusted off the old 2012 leaked coal strategy to try to claim that there is some kind of foreign funded and tightly orchestrated conspiracy to systematically destroy the Australian coal industry. (I seriously don’t know where they get these whacky ideas from!),” he wrote.
Indeed, miners’ say
Coming back to the present, the Wikileaks revelations strengthened the aforementioned allegations cited by John Hepburn.
According to Business Insider, Adani Australia chief executive Jeyakumar Janakaraj said the leaked emails were “evidence that these are broader well-funded activist campaigns as part of a wider anti-coal campaign that is being financially backed and influenced a long way from workers in Australia and those suffering energy poverty in India.”
Government officials were also quick to react: “These groups appear to have misused their domestic tax-deductible status and green credentials to engage in a shameless political campaign designed to damage our national interest by shutting down the Adani coal mine,” conservative senator Cory Bernardi wrote in a newsletter to his supporters.
But according to The Guardian, Hepburn says that these reactions are nothing less but hypocritical. “They’re saying that we need to guard our sovereignty from environmental organisations, when the mining in Australia is 80% foreign-owned (…) And international foreign-owned mining companies dropped $20m into a campaign to prevent a new tax on their industry and, in doing so, destabilised a prime minister. And that is the big issue in terms of national sovereignty,” he is quoted as saying.
Galilee Basin coal export projects map. (Courtesy of GalileeBasin.org)
What’s at stake
After spending over $120 million in legal costs and cutting its way through environmental hurdles, Adani was able to get approval for its project subject to 36 conditions.
Carmichael is one of the world’s largest coal mines. It is expected to produce and transport about 60 million tonnes of coal a year for export, mostly to India.
However, it is also expected to impact the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. According to UNESCO, the area is already experiencing “a continuing decline in the quality of some parts” of the reef, and resource extraction would only worsen the situation.
More than 150 marine scientists from 33 institutions around the world agree with the UN agency. In a letter sent to the Australian government back in 2013, they warned that new coal ports and other industrial projects pose mounting threats to the reef’s habitat.
In the wake of these reports, the Deutsche Bank refused to fund Adani’s plans to expand the port, and later the Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s largest financial institution, decided to cut ties with the Indian miner.
The Wikileaks emails reveal the Sunrise Project’s leader congratulating the environmental movement over the banks’ decisions.
5 Comments
Graeme Henderson
Well Greenpeace Australia has been corrupt for decades, since the 90’s, so they are only pretending to be environmentalists. Lock the Gate Alliance is the same, actually they run cover defense for the CSG industry and soak up and waste ‘Green Money. The Greens are no better. So the idea that these groups are corrupt does not surprise me. I used to be Greenpeace Australia’s office trouble shooter, I’m not joking here.
Duncan Hackett
Sandler Foundation’s mission is to “invest in strategic organizations and exceptional leaders that seek to improve the rights, opportunities and well-being of others, especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.” They have also funded:
A Johns Hopkins University national effort to reduce central-line associated bloodstream infections
The Pew Charitable Trusts’ “Safe Credit Cards Project”
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
National Center for Youth Law
Earthjustice
Free Press
Yeah they sound corrupt all right.
Dean
It works in America’s best interests that cleaner thermal coal doesn’t reach the market and Australia slowly becomes the next phillipines…a dependant country to the great american empire
patentbs
American ‘charitable trusts’ are governed by a set of regulations that include the loss of status if they forward dollars to fight against a specific corporation or project in another country. The reason for this is to stop it looking like USA is trespassing in another nation. These regulations have been ignored in the past (and the future) and slight of hand tricks along with refusal to name donor organisations are the order of the day.
My issue is with these orgs that use tax allowances (read 30 to 40% US taxpayer money) to attack a company in another country. Follow the rules or get outa town, just like everyone else!
Gary
I have no issues with the environmentalists and their views or their intentions, that is their right. However when it is done in an underhand, secret way as this apparently has been done you automatically go on the defensive as they are not playing by the supposed rules that govern all of us. Until they do things in a transparent fashion I and many others will always be very suspicious of what their intentions actually are.