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Responsible mining must preserve the environment
http://www.oilinuganda.org/features/opinion/responsible-mining-must-preserve-the-environment.html
Monday, 25th August 2014 |
Uganda appears set to intensify mineral exploitation to spur economic development, but this should not be at the expense of the environment in mineral-rich areas.
By David Kyagulanyi
In this year’s State of the Nation address by H.E the President of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, there was a new and clear emphasis on the development of Uganda’s mineral resources to achieve the country’s 2040 economic development goals.
More recently, the Minister for Energy and Mineral Development, Eng. Irene Muloni, made a similar presentation to prospective investors in London, UK.
In this new and rather passionate promotion of investment in the country’s mineral resources, the government is now clearly pointing out the mineral resources, quantity of deposits and existing mines where the certainty of exploration and business success for investors is more or less guaranteed.
Uganda is attempting to attract firms that will invest responsibly in the mining sector and add value to the minerals. Yet there is no doubt that some of the future contentious issues of this eventually huge change in the country’s strategic plans, regional mining status and economic fortunes, will be the socio-economic impacts and effects on the environment, of mining and mine-based industrial development.
Given that most of the mining and mineral extraction plants and operations will be in the rural areas, and considering Uganda’s age and gender demographics as well as cultural practices, mining will mainly affect the women and children in those mineral-rich areas.
As such, wide-reaching and impactful community-specific development initiatives that target the livelihood of women and children need to be made a mandatory part of resource developers’ and mining companies’ proposals for each resource and mine development, processing, extraction, refining and value-addition project. This will minimise resource-related conflicts in mining areas more so for Uganda where more economic and developmental uses of land are being adopted and the cultural value-systems do not match the new economic realities.
Ores of iron, gold, copper, salt, silver, zinc, tin and nickel have been mined, processed and even value-added on by humanity for millions of years. It is therefore a real loss to Uganda and akin to mastering the art of crawling, if we export raw minerals without doing any real value-addition to them.
Uganda has reached a point in its economic development when the economic and sustainable-developmental values of relatively new mineral resources and deposits have to be harnessed.
Uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy generation will inevitably raise lots of regional and possibly even global opposition, most especially with regard to its safety and environmental aspects and, even more importantly perhaps, with regard to the cost of nuclear plants closure, decommissioning and site remediation.
Therefore the country’s uranium plans have to be well thought out, efficient and transparently implemented. The same goes for rare earths deposits and rare metal resources. The environmental, occupational and operational safety aspects need to be planned for well in advance.
Uganda must partner with companies from countries where mining is a major mainstay of their economies and contemporary cultural set-up.
These same countries have also placed great emphasis on the development of mineral extraction or mineral processing technologies that are environmentally friendly.
Otherwise, like many communities in many mineral-rich countries have got to learn, the medium to long term effects of unclean mining and inefficient mineral processing technologies to the environment and people living in mining areas or near mining industrial complexes can be very expensive to correct.
Mr. Kyagulanyi is a geologist and director at Kweri Limited, a local mining company.