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The environmental and social liabilities of the extractive sector

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Environmental advocates routinely oppose mining and hydrocarbon-development projects because they believe that remote areas of the Amazon should remain pristine. Typically, they organize their opposition during the environmental review process with campaigns that focus on issues that are local (water quality), regional (biodiversity) and global (climate change). Occasionally, they succeed in stopping a project, but more often they must settle for environmental and social action plans that ameliorate only the worst aspects of what are, essentially, irreversible changes to habitats and ecosystems. Indigenous peoples are outspoken in their opposition to mineral development because their communities can be transformed by immigrants or disrupted by catastrophic events that threaten their livelihoods. They have been particularly successful in resisting projects that impinge upon their territories due to a legal principle incorporated into international law, which obligates governments and developers to obtain their ‘free prior and informed consent’ (FPIC). Not surprisingly, their successes in halting or delaying several highly lucrative development projects have led to a political backlash. Industrial mines A modern industrial mine is a highly engineered hole in the ground. Depending upon the target minerals and the geological setting, the mine can be a complex underground structure or a surface excavation covering thousands of hectares. All mines are accompanied by infrastructure to transport massive amounts of rock and ore and a mill to grind the ore into fine particles that are (usually) mixed with water to create a slurry that is processed to concentrate the target mineral into an industrial commodity. An…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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