Issue 167 – June 2011
Mining is a destructive activity that has particularly serious impacts on forests and on the communities who depend on them. It is a direct cause of deforestation and some of its impacts are discussed in this bulletin. But what is behind mining? In answering this question, we look at the factors that are driving the expansion of the mining industry and in this sense could be considered underlying causes of deforestation: above all, a model of so-called development that is blind to the limits of nature. Such model fosters an indiscriminate and increasing demand for consumer goods benefitting ever bigger corporations while leads to the expansion of mining in order to produce them. Mining also contributes to global warming and thus climate change. However, REDD projects implemented under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are being used by mining companies to clean up their image. But the destructive advance of the mining industry has come up against the fertile resistance of communities around the world who are leading the way. This bulletin is theirs.
See http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/167/viewpoint.html.