Mining can disrupt the lives of the people living near the mining site due to disruptions to ecosystems and local communities. Some resources like water and elictricity for instance have to be shared between the mining project and other industrial agriculture and forestry. This can easily create conflicts as an example: the civil war erupted in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, largely due to unresolved community grievances against the Panguna copper mine.
In June 2002, the Peruvian community of Tambogrande rejected mining due to concerns regarding the displacement of half of its residents and fear of the impacts of mining on the community’s traditional livelihood. This project of displacing the residents may results on them having Food insecurity, loss of access to common resources and public services, Social Breakdown and Marginalization. Mining provides job opportunities, those communities which depends on these jobs to sustain their economies are vulnerable to negative social impacts, as these jobs are limited in number and duration which might creates conflicts.
In Africa, rebels were controlling diamond mines to buy weapons and finance the civil war. Angola’s UNITA rebels derived approximately $3.7 billion in diamond sales between 1989 and 2000 to pay for continued resistance to the Angolan government—more than they received from anti-communist governments during the cold war. An estimated 500,000 Angolans died during this time period.
Also, mining tends to raise wage levels, leading to displacement of some community residents and existing businesses, and elevated expectations. Mining also trigger indirect negative social impacts, such as alcoholism, prostitution, and sexually transmitted diseases.
Good discussion about the social impacts of mining, although this applies to mining in general. Try to be more specific and relate to a particular company and it’s strategy.
ReplyDeleteGood idea to bring social impacts, as Ghosia said, this can also help us to see if the company is addressing the social phenomena that it is generating. In addition, the recent case of the Chilean miners show that there is a strong network of social support that could be 'activated' if needed. Companies like Goldcorp could try to benefit this network by for instance providing job opportunities to people in that network, or setting up alternative businesses to help communities. In your economic factor analysis post you seem to outline that. You can then look at strategies that they are (or should be) implementing to address these factors.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the blog update :p.
Regards,
JR