“While Anglo American makes its profits, La Guajira is being polluted and dying of thirst. Capital at the expense of our blood and our displacement. La Guajira: 30 years of sadness, suffering, displacement and impunity. And the companies call themselves responsible? Anglo American’s actions do not contribute to peace in our Guajiran lands – they are the cause of forced displacement.”
An ocean and a continent away, Rio Tinto are seen in a similar light in Madagascar. Malagasy activist Mamy Rakotondrainibe has come to London on multiple occasions to challenge London-based extractive bullies before. What Rio Tinto calls a corporate social responsibility initiative in Mamy’s home country, she describes as a “double land grab.”“To claim green credentials the company not only occupies community land at the mine but is also prohibiting local land use at the forest site claimed as ‘biodiversity offset’. The biodiversity offset is increasing risk of hunger and deprivation of these subsistence farming communities as far as 50 kilometres away from the mine.”
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest gold mining company, Canadian-based BarrickGold, has long-been awash in criticism, ranked the 12th least-ethical company in the world by Swiss research firm, Covalence, in 2010. A series of interviews with those affected by its mines, following the company’s 2016 Annual General Meeting in Toronto, suggested little had changed since then:“Since the mine started, a lot of bad things have happened. Killing of harmless Indigenous people, raping of young girls and women and dumping of mine waste near my village has turned our lives upside down. ….the mine has made our life miserable in the span of 20 years.” – Lucy Yuki, Porgera mine, Papua New Guinea
“I have lived in this community since I was born, and the last four years that Barrick has been here have been the worst of my life.” – Juliana Guzman, Pueblo Viejo mine, Dominican Republic
A group calling themselves ‘The Oxymoron Appreciation Society’ re-branded the front of the hotel where the Responsible Extractives Summit was taking place, hanging a banner satirically-declaring themselves the conference’s true presenting sponsors on its opening day. With the names on the bill and a glimpse into the stories above, it’s hard to see the Responsible Extractives Summit in any other light. Terms like ‘ethical,’ ‘sustainable,’ and ‘responsible’ once carried the moral weight to hold an unscrupulous mining industry to account in the public eye. Today, through events like the ‘Responsible Extractives Summit,’ mining companies have taken this language, strip-mined it of any practical meaning and used it to legitimise their own profits. What is clear is that these companies would struggle to find any dictionary definition of ‘responsibility’ that matched their real-world activities. What is less-clear is why events like the Responsible Extractives Summit exist at all. Are they a cynical PR manoeuvre to legitimise inherently illegitimate – but profitable – business practices? Or are these companies truly the best in a failing field, unable to maintain even the most basic of ethical standards in pursuit of their corporate aims? Neither possibility can distract us from a difficult conclusion: that we need to move away from an extractive economy. Immediately. Anything less is complicity in perpetuating the crimes faced by Samuel, Mamy and so many others. The transition won’t be an easy one, but perhaps we can start by banishing this notion of responsible extractivism to the dustbins of history. You can read more about the actions of some of the companies that spoke at the Responsible Extractives Summit at: http://responsibleextractives.tumblr.com/ Watch the video from the Oxymoron Appreciation Society stunt The Oxymoron Appreciation Society leaflet (click for full size versions):
