The paper mill of the ENCE group, in the Ría de Pontevedra, It was inaugurated by Franco in 1963. It has been at the center of a dispute for years between the property, which considers infrastructure a fundamental element of the economic development of the region, and the local City Council, managed by BNG and supported by various environmental and neighborhood associations that denounce the impact of the paper industry. about the fragile ecosystem of the estuary.
Despite the convictions for ecological crimes Due to the discharges carried out in the estuary up to 1994, in 2016 the Government of Mariano Rajoy renewed for sixty years the concession of the land where the factory is located. The reason given was to preserve the hundreds of jobs in the factory.
The Pontevedra City Council and environmental associations such as Greenpeace and the Association for the Defense of the Ría challenged the measure and, in 2021, the National Court annulled the extension granted by the PP Government to the ENCE paper mill, invoking the reform of the Coastal Law.
Finally, on February 7, 2023, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the National Court, endorsing the extension until 2073 granted to the factory. By that date, the Lourizán coastline, where the factory is located, could already be completely flooded by the rise in sea level caused by climate change. An increase to which, ironically, the factory contributes by emitting more than 700,000 equivalent CO₂ masses each year.
Who defends whom in environmental conflicts?
The case of ENCE is a classic example of environmental conflictin which the legitimate fear of workers to lose their jobs is intertwined with social injustices and environmental damage that those same jobs create in a territory.
The installation of ENCE in the Pontevedra estuary in 1963 violently displaced many shellfish women who found their livelihood and way of life on the Lourizán beach.
In addition, the factory has poisoned for decades the fragile ecosystem of the estuary and imposed in a large part of Galicia a monoculture as destructive as that of eucalyptus.
Ecology, work, ideology
The systematic mapping work of the EJAtlas project led by Professor Joan Martinez Alier (UAB) is a mine of information on the conflicts between environmentalism and work. For the ecosocialist school, the fight to protect the natural environment It is not at odds with the fight to defend employment, but is a fundamental condition for the protection and empowerment of the working class.
For this it is not understood how the main Spanish unions They have supported the permanence of an industry as polluting as ENCE in a natural and social environment as delicate as the Pontevedra estuary. In defense of the threatened jobs, the general secretaries of the UGT and the Workers’ Commissions have declared themselves in favor of ENCE’s permanence in the estuary. Also the Galician communist youth they privilege jobs to protect the environment.
It is not surprising that unions and political organizations, following the classic productivist Marxist vision, defend workers and workers. What is surprising is that, although they are supposed to be progressive, they take clearly anti-environmental positions.
Among workers who see their jobs threatened, there is a dangerous tendency to view environmentalism as a movement hostile to the working class, or even as a conspiracy of the capitalists.
But are we sure that by defending any form of employment, even those that cause the destruction of nature, the rights of workers are defended? Defending work at all costs, doesn’t it rather favor the interests of large economic groups, which are most responsible for environmental damage?
A false dichotomy between work and the environment
These positions are based on the false antagonism between work and the environment, derived from a productivist interpretation of marxism which today is not only obsolete, but also harmful to the interests of the working class.
Until the 70s of the 20th century, Marxism was characterized by its productivist approach, with the development of the productive forces and technology as elements. emancipators from the workers. From then on, thinkers like André Gorz claimed the importance of merging Marxist and ecological thought. Other authors: John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, James O’Connor and, more recently, Kohei Saito, have argued that Marx’s original writings already included a critique of the ecological destruction caused by capitalism. Therefore, the dThe defense of the working class goes through the defense of nature against the system of plunder set in motion by capitalist accumulation.
Moreover, as Stefania Barca, professor of Political Ecology at the University of Santiago, maintains, the emancipation of the working classes is only possible through the recognition of the forces of reproduction, understood as subsistence work, reproduction, regeneration, restoration and care of human and non-human life. After all, without a healthy environment there can be no life or work.
lack of imagination
In the JUST2CE project, financed by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, we have analyzed the struggles of neighboring communities and some union groups in the environmental conflict generated in Taranto by what was once the largest steel factory on Italian territory, of the steel company ILVA.
For decades, the steel mill caused deaths and environmental destruction. In this case, the large left-wing unions also opposed the closure of the facilities for years.
However, the neighborhood committee “Liberi e Pensanti” (Free and Thinkers) continues to fight for the closure of the factory, while preserving jobs. His proposal is to create cooperatives that would be self-managed by the steel mill workers, with the aim of revitalizing the area and returning it to the public. The task, hard and long, would provide work for ILVA employees for another 30 years.
For this committee, the ILVA is irreformable. However, steel production could be maintained, although reduced to a minimum, dimensioned to national needs, using clean technologies and in a location that does not pose risks to people and the environment. It is not about transferring polluting production to third countries, but about producing less and in a clean and self-managed way by the workers in the area.
This idea also represents a third way between the nationalizations of inefficient companies that are usually proposed by the classic unions, and the closure of factories or the relocation of neoliberal policies.
Why not apply these ideas to the ENCE case?
Why not design, together with the employees of the factory and the public, innovative solutions that preserve the interests of people with the imperative of caring for the estuary Pontevedra?
It is likely that ENCE will end up leaving Pontevedra before 2073. Perhaps because of the rise in sea level, perhaps because it finds other ways to maximize its benefits. Then, the employees will have been left without work and Pontevedra with an irreversible ecological disaster. As often happens, the costs of abandonment would be borne by society as a whole.