Onyx River Court Challenge Verdict
The Guardian, 6th May 2031
Environmental court finds in favour of drinks company
The long-running legal dispute between environmental activists and an American soft drinks company over the future of an Antarctic river ended today, reports The Guardian’s Jenni Havers.
A Globalchem tanker containing ten million litres of water from the expanded Onyx River landed in California three years ago, sparking a long-running dispute as to the legality of collecting and exploiting the water. Ancient Springs, a newly-formed subsidiary of CornuCorp that purchased the water from Globalchem, argued that the water was collected for scientific purposes, and that the owners had the right to process or sell the water freely after their research was completed.
Thomas Mwambe, speaking for a coalition of environmental groups including Australia’s Icy Waters, New Zealand’s Whole Earth and Greenpeace, says the volume of water transported indicates that the intention was always to exploit the water commercially. “The recent sharp rise in the current of the Onyx River is a matter of grave alarm, not an opportunity for yet more corporate greed. Some of the meltwater coming down that river hasn’t seen sunlight or open air for more than a million years.”
Justice Erzbet Grgic of the United Nations Commission for Environmental Law – also known as the Environmental Court – ruled that while Globalchem’s presence in the region may have been an infraction of the Antarctic Treaty, the water couldn’t have been returned to its source without contaminating a fragile ecosystem, and the sale was legitimate. Mwambe’s coalition is reportedly planning to throw its efforts behind their separate ongoing lawsuit against Globalchem for trespassing.
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