Less Mining for a Better World

less mining for a better world

gabriel rivas-ducca , foei mining campaign coordinator, foe costa rica

The lead-up to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg is a good time to ask ourselves, “How has life changed for communities in and around mines in the ten years since the Rio Earth Summit?”

when only destruction is sustained
As UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recently said in relation to Agenda 21 implementation, "…in some respects conditions are actually worse than they were 10 years ago."

For those of us who campaign on mining's environmental and social impacts, those words clearly reflect the reality and perfectly answer the above question. Or, in the words of the Indonesian Mining Advocacy Network JATAM, “Mining since the Rio Summit [has meant] a decade of sustained destruction.”

seeing through the myths
Let us take a look at the basic dynamics of the mining industry.

Destruction by mining companies strikes at the resource bases that communities need to sustain their future. Furthermore, the link between the mining and oil sectors and poverty has been illustrated very clearly (for example in “Extractive Sectors and the Poor,” an Oxfam America Report, October 2001). Since this destruction occurs in a vacuum of effective, legally binding regulation, mining corporations simply walk away from what should be their “corporate responsibility," their ecological and social debt to affected societies.

The “greenwashing” initiatives of the industry continue to be discredited, including the recent Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) Project (see article page 7). And the “multi-stakeholder dialogues'” which are in some cases even promoted by the UN are simply asymmetric exercises that perpetuate inequalities and business-as-usual practices.

mining+10: our vision
So this time we must ask ourselves: when it comes to mining, what kind of world do we want ten years from now? How do we imagine the role of mining if we want to achieve a truly sustainable future?

Because mining is by definition an unsustainable activity, our mission is to seek the reduction of mining activities. This should also be the mission of the mining industry itself if it is serious about sustainability. Yet we know that this will be counter to the industry's recognized goals because "in market-based economies, making a profit, and a competitive return on shareholder investment, is the primary object of corporate leadership” (MMSD Project Draft Report “The Minerals Industry”).

clear goals, unified resistance
An impressive number of organizations working on mining issues came together in November 2001 to develop a mature, shared vision of the future that we want (see article next page).

We agreed that in this world, communities should have the right to say “no” to mines, and should be permitted to pursue alternative economic development. Mining, if permitted, should benefit communities, and internalize the social, cultural and environmental costs of doing business. The meeting agreed to many other points relating to when and how mining should be carried out in order to minimize its destructive impacts. We realized that to achieve these goals we will require a strong, active and global anti-mining network that integrates work between NGOs and communities.

We are at a crossroads, and in front of us lie a variety of possible scenarios. We can see the conventional world of market forces and policy reform; we fear a violent breakdown of the system and the creation of fortress societies; we envision the transition to eco-communalism and new sustainability paradigms.

This special mining issue of LINK demonstrates the intolerable reality of the current mining world. It celebrates the resistance of many groups (including those outside the FoE federation) and communities. And it presents alternative concepts that will guide us toward sustainable economies and societies, a vision that we will seize upon as we continue to challenge and resist neoliberal economic globalization.