Mining and Sustainable Development II - DTIE

Mining
ment, if forthcoming, leaves many vulnerable
groups excluded from its benefits. Today, the
promise of “development” is no longer enough to
ensure that corporations and governments gain
access to resources. The issue in some cases is precisely:
“development” according to whose definition
of quality of life and well-being? For whom?
What kind of development? 4
In this era of multi-culturalism, and environmental
and human rights concerns, the mining
industry is at a cross-roads. Access to information
and communication technologies has allowed
unprecedented visibility of the actual historical
experience of many local communities with mining
and with its lasting (positive and negative)
effects on livelihoods and health, as well as of the
non-mining options left to mining regions and
communities once the minerals have been extracted.
For some stakeholders the contribution of
mining to sustainable and equitable development
is far from clear. This perception is based on past
and present cases of insufficient transparency in
the management of information on the social and
environmental impacts of mining, unequal distribution
of its economic benefits between the federal
and the municipal governments in some
nations, and inadequate management of royalties
and taxes. If trust and respect are accepted as the
necessary ethical bases for equity and meaningful
participation in decision-making processes,
improving the quality, timeliness, accuracy, cultural
compatibility and integrity of communication
between stakeholders is a very real challenge.
This in itself calls for a greater effort on the part
of governments and companies to articulate intercultural
protocols for the management of consultation
and negotiation processes for large-scale
resource development projects.
To this end, another important challenge is
establishing a “dialogue of knowledges”, between
mainstream science and practical traditional
knowledge about the local environment. EIAs and
SIAs, and the scientists in charge of predicting
impacts, must incorporate methodologies that
facilitate joint decision-making processes with
local organizations in order to jointly evaluate
impacts and plan for mine closure and rehabilitation
from the outset. This would allow for the
development of a better understanding of the
restrictions and potential that a local ecosystem
and social context imply for a projected mineral
development, and thus provide the opportunity
to design the project accordingly and put in place
the necessary management systems. On the basis
of this increased understanding, the challenge is
to put in place multi-stakeholder monitoring systems
that generate and maintain trust among
stakeholders, a key cornerstone of lasting partnerships.
Only through addressing these challenges
will it be possible to develop forms of partnership
with local communities that will respect their view
of the purposes of development. Mining may then
be seen to contribute towards increased levels of
well-being in multi-cultural regions and localities.
Notes
1 Ethnic integrity: “The maintenance of factors
that are essential for the life, sustenance and recreation
of the ethnic, economic, political, social,
spiritual and cultural systems of indigenous peoples”
(Direccion General de Asuntos Indigenas –
Ministerio del Interior, Colombia, 1998. Los
◆◆◆◆◆
Pueblos Indigenas en el Pais y en América: Elementos
de politica colombiana e internacional. Serie Retos
de la Nacion Diversa, No. 1. Santafé de Bogotá).
2 Parakh Hoon, Naresh Singh and Samir S. Wanmali.
1997. Sustainable Livelihoods: Concepts,
Principles and Approaches to Indicator Development.
A Draft Discussion Paper. Prepared for the
workshop on Sustainable Livelihoods Indicators.
UNDP, New York.
3 Although demographic data on indigenous populations
in many countries is often incomplete, it
is estimated that there are some 300 million individuals
who identify themselves as belonging to
indigenous peoples in the world today. They
inhabit 70 countries and are characterized by an
enormous cultural diversity (COICA – Coordinadora
de Organizaciones Indigenas de la Cuenca
del Amazonas – In: Banco Mundial and OLADE.
Tercera Reunion del Grupo Energia, Poblacion y
Ambiete. Cartagena, 1999. Consideraciones sociales
y ambientales de las actividades hidrocarburiferas en
areas sensibles de la cuenca Sub-Andina).
4 For an extensive critique of the “development”
paradigm see: Arturo Escobar. 1995. Encountering
Development: The Making and Unmaking of
the Third World. Princeton University Press.
Princeton. For discussion of development, postmodernism
and multi-culturalism see also: Arturo
Escobar. 1999. El Final del Salvaje: Naturaleza,
Cultura y Politica en la Antropologia Contemporanea.
Instituto Colombiano de Antropologia &
CEREC. Santafé de Bogotá.
◆
Mining and World Heritage
considerations
Mechtild Rössler, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 7 place de Fontenoy,
75352 Paris 07SP, France
Arecent workshop on “World Heritage and
Mining”, organized by the World Conservation
Union (IUCN), and the International
Council on Metals and the Environment
(ICME) in collaboration with UNESCO’s World
Heritage Centre in Gland (Switzerland) from 21
to 23 September 2000, explored this difficult relationship.
The 1972 World Heritage Convention,
one of the flagship legal instruments in the conservation
field, protects sites of outstanding universal
value. 630 of these are protected around the
world in 118 countries. 430 cultural, 128 natural
and 22 sites of both cultural and natural values are
inscribed on the prestigious World Heritage List.
Although the sites are nominated by the States
Parties to the Convention (currently 161), these
sites are the shared concern of humanity as a
whole.
The responsibilities and obligations, as well as
the benefits of the World Heritage Convention are
indeed enormous. The specific cases we have been
dealing with, which are illustrated in Table 1, are
far from being a matter of importance only to the
particular sites in the countries, but are an issue of
global concern. The World Heritage status of
these sites makes their protection not only a
responsibility of each of the States Parties but also
for the international community as a whole. Mining
and related issues concerning the management
and protection of World Heritage sites are challenging
the future implementation of the World
Heritage Convention.
The necessity for a new dialogue with the mining
industry can easily be demonstrated: disasters,
such as the toxic mining spill threatening Donaña
National Park (Spain) in April 1998, which led to
such immense cleaning operations that the mining
company became bankrupt, or the recent spill
at Baia Mare, Romania which affected several
World Heritage sites in the region including the
Danube Delta (Romania) and Hortobagy
National Park (Hungary), illustrate such a need.
Increasingly, the World Heritage Centre, as Sec-
88 ◆ UNEP Industry and Environment – Special issue 2000