09.20.08
The Gold Bug
RG mail
The Gold Bug
Lia Tarachansky
Companies and Workers in a Toxic Industry
Canadian Dimension magazine, September/October 2008 issue
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2008/09/04/2022/
Guided by resource discovery and the heavy-handed rule of the free
market, the mining of gold today is “rush-mining,†much as it was a
century ago. From the Indigenous lands of Brazil to those in Canada,
from Tanzania to the Philippines, whenever gold is discovered, local
communities are forced to migrate or attempt to adjust to the new
industry. In fact, only eleven per cent of the gold mined worldwide
has a practical use in technologies like biomedicine or electronics.
Meanwhile, seventy per cent is used for jewellery, with the rest going
to investment. Some 35,000 tonnes of gold simply sit in bank vaults
around the world, while the environment and innumerable communities
are destroyed for its excavation.
Canada plays a huge role in this global market, being home to the
largest gold-mining corporations in the world. At the very top reigns
Barrick Gold, with others like Goldcorp, Gabriel and Pacific Rim close
behind. Collectively they mine on every continent except Antarctica,
on which mining is forbidden. But not all gold is excavated by large,
corporate colonialists, nor is all of it done abroad. One quarter
comes from artisanal or small-scale mining, and minimal but continuous
extraction takes place at home (mostly in Ontario and Quebec.)
Countries in Central America and Central Africa have low environmental
regulations and worker-safety requirements. They are resource-rich,
and are therefore a lucrative destination for Canadian businesses. At
home, even though most resource extraction takes place on Indigenous
lands, we have relatively strict extraction, land-use and
environmental laws, meaning most companies strive to mine offshore.
Canada: A Major Player
Many Canadian companies have been alleged and shown to participate in
violations of international law. Amnesty International and CorpWatch,
among others, have cited Barrick Gold, for example, for gross human-
rights abuses. In spite of such findings, most corporations continue
to be supported by such international bodies as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. The former, for example, has secured
Barrick with a $56.3-million guarantee on its investment in Tanzania,
eeven as the company was still involved in legal proceedings in that
country.
Other Canadian corporations — like Inmet Mining in Papua New Guinea
and Newmont Mining Corporation of Canada in Ghana, Romania and Peru —
are allowed to mine with the backing of our government. In Chile this
has meant ignoring the local peoples’ objections to these companies’
operations, while they were being financially supported at home by
Export Development Canada, and publicly backed by Prime Minister
Stephen Harper.
Small-Scale Mining
In countries like Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ecuador and Ghana, millions
of people have taken gold extraction into their own hands. Often in
direct competition with major corporations, individual miners (called
“artisanal†miners) sometimes unite with community members into small-
scale operations. Both artisanal and small-scale mining are important
for families in the developing world — often their only means of
survival. Most enter the business because their former source of
income has been destroyed.
Like large-scale operations, this form of mining has massive effects
on human and environmental health. Unlike large-scale production,
however, the artisanal miners and their families inherit the bulk of
these effects directly, thanks to their use of toxic mercury and
cyanide in processing the metals. Toxic chemicals like arsenic and
copper leach into waterways, pollute the air and seep into the soil of
local communities.
When the two are in competition, large-scale mines often subject the
small-scale ones to forced relocation, marginalization and sometimes
even persecution, with the assistance of compliant governments.
Traders who purchase the refined gold from the artisanal miners also
often exploit them with artificial monopolies and restriction of
access to fair prices and alternative incomes.
In some countries, like China, the government has rendered small-scale
mining illegal and provides exclusive rights to large-scale
corporations. For millions of people, therefore, this means
criminalization and loss of income. It also means large-scale
operations take over and — yet again — pass on the pollution to the
local population. In most cases, companies also pay incomplete taxes,
thanks to government subsidies seeking to keep their business. In
return, companies provide largely symbolic corporate-responsibility
policies and international-development campaigns.
Problems and Conflicts
Like large industry, small-scale miners are driven by chance
discoveries of resources, as in one devastating example of a temporary
1980s gold rush in Brazil, wherein a mass migration of small-scale
miners invaded indigenous Yanomami land. A bloody conflict was the
result, leading to the death of twenty per cent of the Yanomami
population in just a few years. In 1992, the government took control
and declared the area Yanomami Park in an attempt to restore peace.
The attempt was short-lived, however, as the land has again recently
been invaded.
Such conflicts have spawned research and inquiry by NGOs and the
United Nations. Organizations like the World Bank then use the NGOs’
reports to advocate for seizing all small-scale mining activities.
A Poisonous Industry
Large-scale operations produce large quantities of toxic waste, which
often gets buried or dumped into streams. Large-scale mining practices
also lead to destruction of topsoil, emission of toxic gases,
degradation of forests and redirection of water, leading to floods and
droughts. Also alarming is the new industrial trend of “green mining,â€
which uses cyanide instead of mercury for gold processing.
Cyanide, used during the processing and refining stages of industrial
gold mining, has several identifiable human health effects. Unlike
mercury, it can enter the body without being actually inhaled or
ingested. It can be absorbed through the eyes and skin, meaning its
effects are more invasive. Over a long period of exposure, toxicities
accumulate. This has been studied and exemplified in such cases as
that of Ghanaian communities situated adjacent to the Bogoso mine run
by the American-owned Golden Star Resources.
Where chronic cyanide toxicity develops, it means severe neurological
and thyroid problems. According to the International Cyanide
Management Code, “chronic cyanide exposure is linked to demyelination,
lesions of the optic nerve, ataxia, hypertonia, Leber’s optic atrophy,
goiters and depressed thyroid function.â€
A Toxic Day’s Work
Small-scale miners are also guilty of using cyanide, though the
quantities are dwarfed by those used in large-scale operations. For a
mining family, this means a full day’s work in knee-high water,
resulting in only one to two grams of gold. The extracted ore is then
processed at home, where it is combined with mercury, burned and
washed with cyanide. The process releases toxic mercury vapour, and
exposes the miners and their families to devastating health effects.
Because of the simple tools and low-process inefficiencies, small-
scale miners release as much as two grams of mercury into the
environment for every gram of gold they get.
But compared to the sixty to seventy per cent of the world’s mercury
pollution that results from large-scale mining, industry and the
burning of fossil fuels, the levels released by small-scale miners are
minimal. But the effect it has on the health of the miners is not. Due
to their direct exposure to mercury and cyanide, and the fact that
they live in the area they pollute, miners are made to suffer the
direct costs of their resource extraction.
Once released into the environment, mercury can travel over 2,500
kilometres in just three days. It pollutes remote areas by dropping
with rainfall or by binding to soil and water surfaces. Improving the
safety of this technology is an urgent concern, as mercury — and its
toxic and organic form, methylmercury — accumulates in human tissues
and causes health effects like tumours, tremors and embryological and
developmental delays.
Resisting Gold Mining
Grassroots and global resistance is steadily growing around the globe.
Communities in Guatemala, the Philippines and Mexico have brought
active struggles against Canadian and other corporations for years.
New resistance is also growing against the Vancouver-based Pacific
Rim, for its gold extraction in El Salvador, as well as in the U.S.
where seventy per cent of gold mining takes place on Indigenous lands.
In Canada, resource extraction also often takes place on Aboriginal
lands, and Indigenous, worker and student political resistance to
corporate mining is on the rise. From Placerdome’s mining in the Yukon
to Goldcorp’s operations in Red Lake, Ontario, a strong movement
across communities and tactics is essential. Changes must be achieved
in governmental policies and procedures, both in their dealings with
the corporate world and their criminalization of Indigenous and
grassroots resistance.