“We will in no way sell our Mother
Earth. To do so would be to give up our
work of collaborating with the spirits to
protect the heart of the world, which
sustains and gives life to the rest of the
universe. It would be to go against our own
origins, and those of all existence.”
Statement of the U'wa people of
Colombia , August 1998.
“The conditions of negotiation with
transnational companies are always
disadvantageous for our country. They are
the ones who impose the economic conditions
that regulate them. For us as indigenous
communities everything is lost: our land,
our capacity to negotiate, our culture, our
security. We remain with a damaged
environment and exhausted natural
resources.”
Armando Valbuena Wouriyu, National
Indigenous Organization of Colombia ,
2003.
“Before the mining operation, our
livelihood was so beautiful. The river that
we drink, wash and [use for] laundry was
always clean naturally. The air we breathed
was so fresh naturally and the roads
without dust. But now, as the mine began,
my people have been badly destroyed. Their
lives and our environment, our trees,
rivers and animals are no longer looking
good as before. The indigenous people,
women, children, travel miles and miles in
search of fresh water to drink, food to
eat, and materials for shelter.”
Indigenous woman living near the
notorious
Ok
Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea
, which
was supported by the Australian export
credit agency EFIC. She does not want to be
identified for fear of her safety.
Affected communities provide sobering
testimonies and well-documented evidence
that many IFI-funded projects cause
environmental disasters and intensify
social conflicts, rather than contributing
to the creation of peaceful, equitable and
environmentally sustainable societies.
Through the large-scale pollution of land,
air and water, people lose their
livelihoods and develop health problems. In
addition, fossil fuel and mining operations
are often associated with severe human
rights violations.
There is a growing worldwide movement
demanding the recognition of these
cumulative negative impacts, which are also
referred to as the ‘ecological debt'. In
the context of the extractive industries,
the ecological debt refers to the
plundering by industrialized countries of
fossil fuel and mineral resources, leaving
behind a trail of degraded forests,
contaminated air and water, divided
communities and diminished biological
diversity. The responsible governments and
International Financial Institutions need
to acknowledge their ecological debt,
rehabilitate or compensate for the damage
they have caused, and transform their
actions in the future.
financing the loss of
livelihoods
Extractive industries place a heavy
burden on their surroundings throughout the
course of their operations. Land, water,
air and the environment are polluted
through chemical waste discharge, spills,
gas flaring, dust generation and the
dumping of wastes.
Chemical, oil and wastewater spills are
among the worst possible environmental
accidents. They are often the result of
companies sacrificing safety measures in
order to cut costs, putting people and the
environment at an extremely high risk.
Between 1998 and 2000, three serious
chemical spills occurred at the Kumtor gold
mine in the Kyrgyz Republic in Central Asia
. The spills poisoned more than 3,000
people, and the number of people who died
as a result is yet to be determined. Kumtor
officials and the World Bank's
International Finance Corporation refuse to
divulge the extent of damage caused by the
disaster.
The people living in the vicinity of
mining sites are plagued by diminished
access to clean drinking water, affected
crops and sick animals. And these threats
to their livelihoods do not evaporate when
the operations terminate. When an oil,
mining or gas project ends, the surrounding
lands are contaminated, water sources
polluted, and forests cut down.
Generally, the women in mining
communities are the most disempowered
through the pollution of natural resources
that inevitably accompanies extractive
projects. Women, who are often in charge of
food provision through agriculture or the
collection of forest products, are
regularly forced out of their traditional
economic roles when natural resources are
contaminated or no longer available. Women,
in particular, are also more susceptible to
water pollution due to the critical role
that water plays in daily household
routines. In addition, women have little
control over or access to the financial
benefits of the development of oil and
mineral reserves. They become dependent on
the wages of men, who are more likely to
find jobs at the mine or drilling site.
Men, however, often fall into the trap of
spending money on alcohol and gambling. The
end result is that women lose
decision-making power, and the household is
left with less cash for food and other
necessities.
Case studies in this publication and
elsewhere clearly illustrate the
destruction of natural resources. For
example, the contamination and
disappearance of fish is a well-known
phenomenon around mine sites. In Laos ,
where the Australian mining company Oxiana
is currently developing the Sepon gold mine
with the likely support of the European
Investment Bank, mercury is discharged into
streams leading to the Nam Kok River .
Local fishermen fear mercury poisoning, and
complain of a severe reduction in the
variety and volume of fish (see case study
page 12
).
In another example, one of Georgia 's
main export products is bottled water from
the Borjomi reserve. However, local people
have well-founded fears that the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which will
cut through the area and which several
International Financial Institutions have
recently decided to support, will pollute
their water (see case study
page 38
).
Communities do fight back. The struggle
in Tambogrande provides a good example of
the clashing interests of an agricultural
community and a gold mining company. In the
1950s, the San Lorenzo Valley in Peru
received World Bank support for an
irrigation project that turned dry desert
into fertile farmland that now supports
20,000 people with its mango and lime
production. Ironically, the World Bank has
recently been asked by a Canadian mining
company to support a cyanide-based open pit
gold mine in the middle of the valley. The
project, referred to as the Tambogrande
Gold Mine, would be worth US$240 million
and would have a life span of ten years.
Aware of the likely environmental and
social impacts on their agriculture,
farmers and residents are fiercely opposing
the proposed gold mine through popular
referenda, blockades and
manifestations.
financing danger and poor
health
The extractive industries are among the
most hazardous industries in the world.
Workers are constantly exposed to dangerous
chemicals, explosives, heavy equipment,
noise, dust, and toxic waste, often without
being informed about the dangers they face.
This is particularly dangerous for pregnant
women, who are especially vulnerable to
noise and pollution. Many workers have died
in explosions, collapses, landslides and
floods. Some companies do not provide
adequate protection (safety boots, gloves,
goggles, hard hats, etc.) for their
workers, and mine jobs are often insecure,
poorly paid, and without insurance benefits
or bonuses for performing hazardous
work.
Women also suffer from an increased risk
of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted
diseases as a side effect of the extractive
industries. Mining and construction
operations attract new workers, mostly
young men, into the area. Unruly behavior,
alcohol-related incidents, gambling and
abuse of women are common around project
sites. Additionally, dislocation and loss
of livelihood force women, including very
young girls, into prostitution (see case
study
page 22
). Many
do not know how to protect themselves from
sexually transmitted diseases, which are as
a consequence spreading very rapidly. AIDS,
for example, is rampant in many extractive
industry towns. In spite of this,
International Financial Institutions have
no guidelines to address HIV/AIDS
prevention.
financing militarization and
human rights abuses
International Financial Institution
involvement in extractive industries is
frequently associated with political and
economic instability, corrupt government
officials, dictatorial regimes, and human
rights abuses. Claiming that they are
non-political actors, IFIs do not take
these situations into account and have no
human rights standards to guide their
involvement. However, in countries like
these, the projects ignite social unrest
and fuel armed conflict due to fierce
competition over control of resources and
revenues.
Authoritarian regimes and dictatorships
have a legacy of supporting the extractive
industries, and vice versa. The hiring of
paramilitary units or company security
personnel results in abuses and human
rights violations and escalates existing
armed conflict. Here again, IFIs have no
security and human rights guidelines, but
instead state that they are non-political
institutions and cannot influence these
situations.
One case of blatant human rights abuses
related to the mining industry is taking
place on the island of Mindoro in the
Philippines , where opposition activists
are considered political extremists and
therefore targeted by military operations.
Recently, in just over two years, more than
20 community leaders and environmental and
human rights activists who were opposing
mining projects were brutally murdered.5
The Philippine government has not ordered
an independent investigation into the death
of these leaders (see
page 11
)
financing the marginalization of
indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are particularly
vulnerable to mining and extraction because
it disrupts their culture, the very basis
of their survival. Indigenous peoples'ways
of life are rooted in traditions closely
linked to the cycles of the natural
environment, and handed down from
generation to generation. The operations of
companies engaged in mining and fossil fuel
extraction break these links by destroying
the forests, defacing the land, poisoning
the air and water, and erasing cultural
identities, thereby pushing indigenous
people to the brink of physical extinction.
The imposition of mining, drilling and
piping in indigenous territories violates
the International Labor Organization's
Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal
People.
In Papua New Guinea , for example, the
introduction of money that accompanied the
influx of mining corporations has led to a
fundamental change in societal relations.
People formerly relied on a social security
system based on the free provision of goods
and services, with an understanding that
these would be returned when needed. The
handing over of money after an exchange of
goods makes an abrupt ending to personal
transactions, and in some non-monetary
societies, the traditional security system
is rapidly losing value as mining
operations gain ground (see case study
page 30
). As companies
do not recognize the religious and
spiritual connections of people to their
environment, they disrupt a cultural system
that is based on respect for trees, land
and water. They take away people's lives of
dignity and replace them with existences of
ongoing humiliation and deprivation.
Finally, mining threatens the health and
lives of previously isolated indigenous
peoples due to their lack of resistance to
disease. For example, the Camisea gas
project in Peru already wiped out 42
percent of the Nahua population through the
introduction of diseases like the flu. For
many indigenous peoples, the only
accessible and acceptable health remedies
are the medicinal plants in their natural
environment, which are in turn endangered
by drilling, piping and mining
financing climate
change
In order to avoid dangerous climate
change, many countries have committed to
reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by
signing the Kyoto Protocol and other
international agreements. However, these
same countries continue to subsidize fossil
fuel operations through their International
Financial Institutions. This major policy
incoherence must be addressed
immediately.
Climate change is a direct threat for
millions of people. Extreme weather events,
the spread of exotic diseases and flooding
will affect us all. Environmental refugees
are already traveling the planet in search
of a safer place to live. The entire
population of the Pacific island of Tuvalu
, which will be one of the first islands to
be flooded and is already experiencing the
siltation of its waters, has applied for
asylum with New Zealand . From a climate
justice perspective, richer countries
should seriously reduce their fossil fuel
emissions.
Contrary to objectives agreed to in
international environmental treaties, IFIs
continue to provide support to fossil fuel
operations. According to the World
Resources Institute, fossil-fueled power
generation and oil and gas development
accounted for 40% of trade and project
finance flows to developing countries
between 1994 and 1999.6 The World Bank
Group alone provided over US$24 billion in
financing for fossil fuel power and
production between 1992 and the end of
2002.
Once burned, the oil transported through
the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in
the Caspian region will contribute an
estimated 185 million tons of carbon
dioxide to the atmosphere each year. This
controversial pipeline received financing
from the World Bank and the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development at the
end of 2003, and other IFIs are likely to
follow (see case study
page 38
).
Metal mining operations are also a major
contributor to climate change due to their
exorbitant energy demands. The Peruvian and
Tanzanian mining sectors' enormous hunger
for energy have caused electricity deficits
and put significant pressure on the
countries' balance of payments due to
increased energy imports.8 In another
example, the West Africa Gas Pipeline will
allegedly pipe gas from Nigeria through
Benin and Togo in order to power gold mines
in Ghana (see case study
page 34
).
This trend needs to be reversed.
Governments should comply with their
commitments to combat climate change by
withdrawing support for extractive industry
projects and supporting renewable forms of
energy to power sustainable societies.
