Extraction - A breeding group for higher level of poverty at the local level
Angam Niumai *
At the backdrop of the reported exploration quest of oil and mining for development by ONGC in Nagaland and the extraction of oil in tribal hills of Manipur by Jubilant Energy, it may be very crucial to do survey based studies on the benefits and the ill effects of such ventures.
Sustainable development is a much abused term today nonetheless it may have been first coined with clear stance. The feted good guys today are no yesteryear's Gandhi with clear ethical objectives and integrity, instead eyeing from the angle of generating massive revenues by exploiting natural resources under the guise of 'development and sustainability' is well known statistic.
We value what's underneath the land more then the much neglected forest above the land which nurtures life and eco-system. Roughly speaking, almost all of tribal hill villagers in Nagaland and Manipur depend on agriculture and allied activities including fishing for everyday survival and livelihood.
The proposed mining will destroy the forest by depositing the mine waste affecting the nearby rice and allied activities soil integrity through usually practiced open cast mining. Fish from the river tributaries will become no-so-safe for consumption due to contaminated rivers through mining, waste sipping into the streams and rivers in the form of acid drainage, leaching etc. affecting the quality of rivers and nearby ponds adversely is inevitable. Mud slides will also become rampant in the mining vicinity.
All the toxic waste will be dumped in the forest under some guise of adherence to International best practices and meeting safety standards which are till today a blatant bogus if and when critically analyzed.
Merits:
- Short term employment and third grade jobs to poor once forest dependent locals as against value for coal and oil worth hundreds of millions of rupees if not in billions.
- Benefits mining companies and outsider investors.
- Certain percentage of revenue benefits to the State Government which never gets filtered down to the real tribal poor forest dependent owners of the land and forest.
- Displacement of forest dependent poor villagers from traditional agriculture and other allied activities at the peripheral vicinity and downstream at the local level
- Directly against the potential long term sustainable agriculture practices like that of NEPED, Nagaland and potential tourism industries. Health hazards
- Potential human rights abuses as well as corruption abuses
- Irreparable damage to environment, biodiversity and endemism
- Accidental tailing through failure and floods could results in damaging land, water and aquatic species.
In conclusion
The mining, oil and gas industries instead of helping the local poor ends up breeding worst form of poverty making it worse than before, scores of studies confirmed findings that developing countries which rely primarily on oil and mining extractive industries tends to end up facing higher level of poverty, child morbidity, mortality, civil war, corruption and totalitarianism.
* Angam Niumai wrote this article for e-pao.net
The writer is a Senior Consultant, Projects, TDD, Government of Gujarat and can be contacted at angamniumai(at)gmail(dot)com
This article was posted on July 27 2012
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