Mines that Devour Mountains

Speaking of the Agenda, I was asked to contribute one of the reflections. Here it is:

MINES THAT DEVOUR MOUNTAINS

An award-winning mining documentary film, Pascua Lama: a Quest for El Dorado was released recently in Montreal. On the cover of the DVD is a photo of the mine combined with a background image of downtown Toronto. The image is appropriate. Toronto’s stock exchange registers 60% of mining companies in the world. The reason is simple: Toronto places no conditions on how mining companies operate. Moreover, it supports those companies politically and financially even when they contaminate the environment and violate human rights.

Most governments in the Southern Hemisphere encourage the mining projects... Even at 4% of overall profit, the returns to a Third World government can be substantial. In many cases the companies pay no taxes at all, nor are they required to pay for environmental clean-up. The result is that mining operations supported by Canadian investment have multiplied around the world and constitute an enormous source of wealth for the Canadian economy. These operations are financed by Canadian public, private retirement funds, trusts and banks that are happy to reap the profits of lucrative mines. In recent decades the prosperity of Canada has rested in large part on these ventures.

Many of us probably still have the image of a mine as a tunnel drilled into the earth to reach veins of rich metal. However, all those rich veins have been exhausted. Mining itself has changed radically as the technology has shifted to retrieving the traces of metal that can be found scattered throughout a wider area. Today’s mines are immense craters, hundreds of meters deep that devour entire mountains. The Pascua Lama copper mine in Chile, the silver mine in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and the Marlin gold mine in Guatemala are such mines. In the case of San Luis Potosí, the mine has eaten away half of the mountain that is the state’s national symbol. The mine tailings,
situated only a few meters from the city limit, are located right over the water table that supplies the city with its drinking water. In Cerro de Pasco, Peru, the mine has repeatedly forced the evacuation of the populationas the pit encroached on the city.

Communities located in the vicinity of mines have found that their lives are bombarded by unbearable noise, including constant dynamite explosions and roads are torn up by huge machinery roaring in and out of the mine.

However, eliminating mountains is only the beginning. In most mining areas the communities have engaged in subsistence farming for centuries. While mines do employ workers, the numbers are not huge and the jobs may last only a generation. The average age of a mine is only about twenty years. Jobs with good salaries require special skills. As a result, most workers come from the cities or even from outside the country. Near the mine site and in the midst of traditional communities, they establish their own communities and their own lifestyle with its urban demands. In some cases, the mining company has provided weekend entertainment for the workers by busing prostitutes in from the city.

The most problematic aspect of mining today lies
in the separation of metal from the tailings. Cyanide is used to float the tailings away from the heavier metal and, in this sense, the process is effective. However, cyanide is extremely toxic. If it enters the water system, vast territories of agricultural land can be contaminated. The Diocese of San Marcos in Guatemala has tested the water sources used by the Marlin mine and, in spite of the assurances by Goldcoprs, the river and the water table are clearly contaminated both by cyanide and by arsenic brought up to the surface from the deep pits.

Many mines in Latin America are established in
areas with a scarce water supply. Frequently the river used by the mine is the only source of irrigation. Moreover, in several cases, the waters supply drinking water to many communities and even major cities. If these are contaminated, the risk to the health of the population is enormous. In areas like Sipicapa in Guatemala, the Marlin mine has already caused serious health problems among the children. Some mining companies have responded by announcing closed system technologies that reuse the water in order to avoid contamination. Yet seepage from the accumulated mountain of tailings continues to be documented. What is worse, the seepage can continue for centuries. As a result, people are afraid to drink the water from the river or from their wells. They are even afraid to eat their own produce.

Peru and Chile are so intent on encouraging mining in their territory that they overlook the prohibition of mining in the vicinity of its borders. The Pascua Lama mine covers an area on both side of the border between Chile and Argentina.in an area dotted with glaciers,the main source of drinking water for Chile. The mine is destroying these glaciers. There are plans in Peru and Ecuador for mining in areas inside or bordering on the Amazon rain forest with its extremely fragile ecologies and dense water tables.

Across the world, indigenous communities affected by mines are joining with other committed organizations from civil society to challenge the practices of the mining industry and to demand socially responsible international standards. These communities have organized massive demonstrations and popular plebiscites in order to demonstrate their opposition. In return, they have been accused by central governments of holding the nation hostage to their interests even though they are frequently defending the health and economy of the entire region. In some communities, the danger is not just to their traditional livelihood and to their health; Leaders have been hauled into court, accused of terrorism and even assassinated. Their lives are at stake.

One important step in the struggle against irresponsible mining practices took place in September, 2008 following a forum of concerned organizations in Bogota. The final declaration called for continentwide action against mining operations and concluded by stating:

We call for a broadest unity that brings together to coordinate all the various ways of resisting to the devastation brought about by the mining industry. This includes the people directly affected, but also intellectuals and writers who denounce these impacts, lawyers, whether indigenous or not who defend the people. It includes human rights institutions, trade unions that defend peoples’ rights, small mining operators with the distinct characteristics of each country and region, non-government organizations who offer technical support that respects the autonomy of our organizations, consumers who question the luxury consumption of metals and also alternative communications media.

Their struggle necessarily extends then to the host countries of these mining conglomerates as well. For years shareholders’ meetings have provided a venue to attempt to convince investors to reject the company policies. Rarely if ever has there been majority support. Still, some propositions have occasionally garnered enough support to force a company to change their approach or even withdraw as in the case of Talisman in the Sudan or Alcan in India.

Another approach has been to raise popular awareness to bring pressure on the government to establish guidelines for national companies operating outside Canada. At the very least these companies should abide by the same standards that operate in the country where they are registered.

In 2006 a roundtable process was set up by the Canadian government in response to a. scathing report (2005) from a parliamentary standing committee. It included government functionaries, representatives of the mining industry itself and NGOs. The committee had meetings open to the general public in major cities across the
country. They were able to work out a consensus position recommending a set of Canadian standards for the industry and the creation of an Ombudsman Office. After being submitted to the Prime Minister, the report died in his office.

Recently a Montreal author published, Noir Canada
(Black Canada). It looks at the activity of
Canadian mining companies in Africa. One of these is Barrick Gold, the largest gold company in the world. Pascua Lama is one of its projects. Barrick was so enraged that it first sued the tiny publishing company, Ecosociété, for 6 million dollars and even threatened to sue anyone who dared claim they were engaged in a “strategic lawsuit against public participation” or SLAPP. A SLAPP is a suit against an individual or group in order to silence opposition. In Canada such suits are still legal.

By a twist of irony, Canadian expertise in mining
and forestry was developed through the extraction
and export of its own natural resources. Canada now
imposes its technology on other countries in spite of the environmental contamination it causes and lack of respect for indigenous human rights.