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How did the DFC Handle Human Rights Concerns about Alto Maipo? Part Two

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When presented with an opportunity to review human rights risks at a major hydropower plant in Chile, the Development Finance Corporation and affiliated international development banks reacted defensively and responded with boilerplate.

In a July post, I set out some context for records I received in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made to the Development Finance Corporation. It’s probably best to review that post before reading this follow up. Briefly, in August 2020, five UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights sent a detailed letter to DFC CEO Adam Boehler, warning of serious human rights risks at Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project in Chile. The DFC is a major funder of the project.

A second set of responsive records, which DFC tells me is the final release, arrived yesterday. I’ve put them online here.

These are emails circulating within DFC and with other members of the Alto Maipo Lender Group in August and September, 2020, in response to the rapporteurs’ letter. The Santiago office of Norwegian bank DNB apparently received the letter first, on 18 August 2020, and emailed others in the Lender Group to alert them that it was on its way.

I don’t know what else the Office of Investment Policy (OIP) had heard about the Alto Maipo project before receiving Uauy’s email, or what exactly prompted OIP’s Jean Kim to remark “It Just keeps on coming.” Maybe Alto Maipo was already a source of concern or bureaucratic headaches, or maybe (given the email was sent at 8PM) it was just an especially busy day at the office.

The correspondence that follows Jean Kim’s email is pretty thoroughly redacted, making it difficult to assess the DFC response, but a few things are tolerably clear.

As suggested by Uauy’s email, DFC, DNB, International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and other members of the Lender Group (like Germany’s KfW Development Bank and Brazil’s Banco Itau) will coordinate their response to the UN letter. The Lender Group’s Independent Environmental Consultant, ERM, will lead this effort.

ERM organizes a call to bring everyone up to speed, and after the call, a Social Risk Officer at DFC emails colleagues with a summary of the letter’s contents: “apparently the letter is claiming that the Project did not complete FPIC [Free, Prior and Informed Consent, as established in the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples], amongst 5 other comments.” The 26 August chain of correspondence also includes a summary of a UN press release on the topic, with this quotation called out in bold:

“The Chilean Government would not be fulfilling its international human rights obligations if it prioritises economic development projects over the human rights to water and health,” said Léo Heller, UN special rapporteur on the human rights to drinking water and sanitation. He referred specifically to the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project, southeast of the capital, Santiago, and the avocado business in Petorca province in the Valparaiso, region north of Santiago.

Heller focuses his remarks on the Chilean government’s obligations to protect human rights. He goes on to suggest that steps taken by the government have been inadequate:

“Not only may this project reduce the main source of drinking water for residents of Santiago de Chile, it could also make air pollution in the capital worse,” Heller said, by damaging the “green corridor” of the Maipo River basin that has helped offset pollution.

During implementation of the project, which is due to come online in December, “although the Government has investigated damages to the environment no effective measure was taken to guarantee the human right to water for people affected by this megaproject”, Heller said.

There is clearly a role — or an opportunity — for the Lender Group to help the Chilean government address these challenges. As funders, the DFC and the Lender Group have a shared, concomitant responsibility to respect human rights in the economic development projects they back; to this end, DFC has its own environmental and human rights policies and compliance procedures in place.

But by September 4, the DFC appears to have assumed a defensive posture. “The letter,” writes Kate Dunbar of the Office of Investment Policy, “has reiterated key issues claimed by the opposition group throughout the Project.” She no doubt has in mind the group — “the opposition” — led by the Center for International Environmental Law, the Chilean NGO Ecosistemas, and Coordinadora No Alto Maipo. These organizations have been monitoring the project and raising concerns over human rights due diligence since its inception.

By September 21st, as the deadline for responding to the letter approaches, this defensive stance has hardened among some members of the Lender Group: the UN letter “contains a series of allegations than contain with [sic] no support whatsoever,” writes one member of the International Development Bank, dismissively. A strategy takes shape:

DNB is on board with the suggestion that the Lender Group keep the response non-confrontational, “high level and pointing to public information and bank’s general procedures.” ERM produces a draft and revisions follow, but all of that is redacted.

It’s hard to say how much these redactions could matter. Overall, the impression is that the Lender Group had decided, by late September, to stonewall. If that impression is mistaken, I welcome corrections. 

How did the DFC Handle Human Rights Concerns about Alto Maipo? A FOIA Request

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An aerial view of the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project

Before the Trump years, few Americans had heard of Chilean mining giant Antofagasta plc or the powerful Luksic family who control it. Today, Antofagasta’s controversial plan to mine copper and nickel on the edge of the Boundary Waters and the scandals associated with it are not exactly common knowledge, but at least better known. Congressional hearings, activism, and investigative reporting helped bring the previous administration’s reckless, clumsy, and corrupt handling of Antofagasta’s permits into focus. (Maybe some of the records I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act helped, too.) But despite steps taken by the Biden administration to set right some of what the Trump administration did wrong in this case, the Antofagasta file is far from closed. The lobbying for reversals and permits continues apace* and important aspects of the story are still obscure.

A FOIA request I made on June 3, 2021 promises to shed some light on one aspect of the story, maybe nothing more than a minor detail, involving the Development Finance Corporation. The first set of records arrived last Friday. Nothing much so far, just some innocuous looking office email correspondence, but I’ve posted the records on documentcloud and will continue to put them up as they arrive. Here, I just want to set these records in context.

The story takes us back to 2013, the first year of Obama’s second term. That’s when Twin Metals Minnesota filed its mineral lease renewal application at the center of the current Boundary Waters controversy, and it’s also when the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, made a $250 million investment in the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project in Chile. At the time, the Luksic Group, owners of Antofagasta plc, held a 40 percent share in the mega-project.

This looks like nothing more than a coincidence. Antofagasta would not formally acquire Twin Metals until 2015; and the company would decide to get out of Alto Maipo in 2016 (though it took until 2020 to divest fully from the project). At most, the OPIC deal might have helped persuade Antofagasta that the Obama administration would look favorably on its North American plans.

In 2018, the Development Finance Corporation, or DFC, took over the OPIC portfolio of projects, investments that aim to alleviate poverty, combat corruption, and promote sustainable as well as low-carbon and no-carbon development. DFC also shares OPIC’s stated commitment to “respect the environment, human rights, and workers rights.” Its Environmental and Social Policy and Procedures document, produced in July 2020, shows remarkably little sign of the crude transactionalism that dominated foreign affairs, including foreign aid and investment, during the Trump administration.

Just one month later, on August 18, 2020, DFC’s statements of principle would be put to the test. The DFC was informed of serious human rights challenges at Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project. Five UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights sent a five page letter to Adam Boehler, Jared Kushner’s friend and college roommate and the Trump-appointed CEO of the Development Finance Corporation, warning of possible human rights violations at Alto Maipo.

The letter is included as an Annex in written comments for the June 9, 2021 meeting of the DFC.

The UN Rapporteurs express concern that the Alto Maipo project hoards water for mining interests, hurts local communities, and is proceeding without adequate concern for human rights and the environment. The letter says the mega-project would reduce “the availability of water for human consumption and domestic use, in contexts already characterized by climate change and water scarcity.” The shortages could also affect subsistence agriculture, “resulting in violations of the right to food and other rights related to the right to an adequate standard of living.” The project appears to be proceeding without participation of the affected communities and with significant damage to biodiversity and the environment, and “multiple human rights violations” are likely to result.

Unable to find Boehler’s response to these claims, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for “all DFC communications regarding the 18 August 2020 letter from UN Special Rapporteurs to DFC CEO Adam Boehler regarding the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project in Chile, including any and all communications to or from Mr. Boehler about the topic.” The few records included in the first FOIA production do not include anything from Boehler; they are a small set of emails to and from Catherine Andrade, DFC Corporate Secretary, in preparation for the June 9, 2021 DFC Board Public Hearing.

Alto Maipo was on the agenda for the day, as it was again at this year’s meeting. Groups that have monitored human rights and environmental issues around Alto Maipo were slated to participate: Juan Pablo Orrego, president of the organization Ecosistemas, and Carla Garcia Zendejas from the Center for International Environmental Law were among the presenters. Observers included representatives of BNP Paribas, Oxfam, US Small Business Administration, Accountability Council, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

All indications are that this was a meeting Boehler’s DFC wasn’t especially eager to have. In April 2020, the DFC declared itself exempt from the Sunshine Act, which requires federal agencies to open meetings for public observation.

In response, the Center for Biological Diversity and other plaintiffs sued:

They say the rule change means that [DFC] no longer faces any obligation to provide communities with information that could later impact their environments and livelihoods.

The Center for International Environmental Law, a co-plaintiff on the suit, spent years working with communities affected by the Alto Maipo Hydroelectric Project, which Chilean activists argue would threaten the drinking supply of more than 6 million people in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. The OPIC granted $250 million in funding to the project in 2013.

“For many years, we worked to hold OPIC…accountable,” Carla Garcia Zendejas, the organization’s director of people, land and resources, said in an email, “ensuring that communities affected by the institution were able to secure access to information regarding the institution’s decision-making processes and to utilize the accountability mechanism when adversely affected….

Garcia Zendejas emphasized that the DFC’s new exemption “had very practical implications for communities on the ground who are seeking information about the projects that could upend their lives.”

Bill Snape, Senior Counsel of the Center for Biological Diversity, added that he could see little reason for the agency to try to exempt itself from the Sunshine Act, “unless you have things to hide.” The plaintiffs did not prevail, however, and in February of this year, Judge Christopher Cooper granted DFC’s motion to dismiss, writing that the Sunshine Act does not apply to the DFC. For now, at least, FOIA does.

* I looked at Q2 2022 lobbying for the Twin Metals project here: