I am in Guatemala as a consultant. You can probably work out for yourself where I am. Right now the reason for being here is confidential; hopefully the reports will soon be public and we can comment on public documents.
We talked today about mining in Costa Rica, which is essentially just next door. We talked of the failure of the Bellavista Heap Leach Pads and we talked about the news that Costa Rica has once again banned mining.
The long-delayed Crucitas mining project that won the approval of Costa Rica’s high court a few weeks back will have to wait another four year or more, following the signing of a decree banning open-pit mining in Costa Rica, by the new president Chinchilla, her first act as president on Saturday. The decree indefinitely suspends “the exploration, extraction and processing of the materials extracted through the use of cyanide and mercury.” It also repeals an executive order by former President Oscar Arias which established an environmental safeguard for mining in the country and spelled out the environmental regulations for mining. Presidential spokesman Carol Roversi said gold mining is not profitable enough to sacrifice the environmental aspect of a country which depends heavily on environmental tourism, a $2 billion-a-year source of revenue.
Last week, I chatted with a mining professional who owns a cabin deep in the woods of British Columbia. As is the case in almost any wood in BC, there is a proposed mine just over the hills and in the next valley. We got angry talking about the mine one valley over. He said: “There should just be some places too beautiful or too valuable to mine.” Obviously he believes the valleys around his log-cabin’s valley fall into that category.
We are all familiar with the far more visible and well-reported story of the Pebble Mine in Alaska, where the argument boils down to the same issue: is this a place too beautiful and too valuable to mine?
I have never been to Costa Rica, but am told by those who have that it is beautiful. If Guatemala is anything to go by, this part of the world is very beautiful. Although the economy here is not supported by tourism, as this is supposedly a dangerous country. Certainly the city looks like Johannesburg and Lima: large walls topped with barb wire around all buildings; many security gates; young men with fierce guns at official checkpoints. It all make you weary and sad, and I suppose scared.
What surprises me about the report on the ban of mining in Costa Rica is the complete absence of any reference to the Bellavista failure and its obvious environmental impact. I know the case is the subject of laws suites that will last as long as Dickens’ Bleak House case—generations in that instance. But surely this fact should be faced and focussed as one of the reasons why mining is now banned in Costa Rica. No point in hiding the elephant beneath a concrete and metal dome like they are trying to do to that BP spewer.
Thus we must accept the Costa Rica decision. And maybe the mining industry will have to one day awaken to the fact that some places just are too beautiful and too precious to mine in. And this from a supporter and beneficiary of mining!
To ask the truly heretical questions:
- Isn’t there enough uranium in Saskatchewan and Namibia that we can stay away from the awesome beauty of Southwest Colorado and the Grand Canyon?
- Isn’t there enough gold in Nevada and South Africa that we can stay away from Pebble?
- Surely there is enough iron ore in Australia and Brazil to make mining the stuff elsewhere redundant?
I am sure you can extend this list for many metals that are promoted in far-away places in small quantities and picturesque valleys. I am sure you can list the details for coal–which I know can be replaced as an energy source by uranium.
I grieve to think some miners will be out of work, some mining companies relegated to oblivion, if my ideas are implemented. But maybe the debate that will surely follow on the BP off-shore oil disaster will lead to intense debate that the mining industry and governments should apply in the context of mining.
I submit we are now in the midst of the tragedy of the commons: if every owner of cows has a right to graze the cows on the commons, soon enough there is no grass for anybody. Maybe we should read Jared Diamond on Haiti versus Hondurus, or the emperors of Japan, and admit that some places have to be kept pristine and some places have to be developed and the free-market right to the commons leads to disaster for all. Maybe it is time for a despised “world government” to apportion resources on a more rational basis than let everybody grab the resources of the commons regardless of the ultimate impact on special places. Maybe Costa Rica is giving us a first lead, that we will ultimately have to follow.
