What do the Mazoa Mountain in the Rupununi, Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo (Region Nine) and Ianna Landing in Barima-Waini (Region One) have in common? They are both sites of the devastating impact of mining on the environment and people’s lives and livelihoods. Recent stories emanating from these places – one in the south and the other in the north of Guyana – offer insight into the greed, cruelty and mindlessness which drive some mining operations.
In the first mentioned instance, the Mazoa Mountain, one of several in the Marudi range in the Rupununi has been destroyed by large-scale gold mining. Residents of the area who grew up seeing that mountain have watched its peak disappear, gouged and excavated by heavy equipment in a gold rush, as humans sought to enrich themselves through finding that precious metal.
It was a foreign company that was granted the claim to mine on this mountain. This newspaper was told that Canadian gold mining firm, Guyana Goldstrike formerly known as Romanex Guyana Exploration Inc holds legal claim over the majority of the Marudi range. No doubt, this was emphasized as a great investment that would benefit the country. But clearly there was no clause in whatever contract was signed that prevents those removing the gold from changing the topography of the area. As it stands now, maps depicting the Marudi range are no longer accurate with regard to its actual physical features. They will have to be redrawn to represent a landscape minus that missing Mazoa peak.
Those who tout sustainable gold mining, believe that it can be carefully managed to preserve or restore biodiversity. One imagines that the flora lost or disrupted when an area is excavated for gold mining can be replanted, but this would have to be enforced by the authorities as it should not be assumed to be a foregone conclusion that a miner or company would spend time and resources repairing a site of exploitation. In this case, the question is how does anyone replace a mountain’s peak? It cannot be done. Therefore, it should not have been destroyed in the first place.
The altering of the topographical features of the Marudi range is not even the worst of it. Large-scale mining with its concomitant heavy equipment is responsible for effectively tearing the mountain down. However, residents told this newspaper that the large-scale miners have mostly left and those who remain are artisanal miners manually plying their trade. How they do so could be cause for even greater concern.
Artisanal mining has long employed mercury to extract gold from ore. Not only is mercury toxic to those handling it, unfortunately it also easily leaches into the environment and its vapour into the atmosphere. It can travel long distances and disperse on land or in waterways in a form known as methylmercury. In this form it is also highly toxic to humans and wildlife and can remain in water and soil perhaps forever.
Guyana signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury on October 10, 2013 and ratified it on September 24, 2014. This means that Guyana pledged to ban new mercury mines and phase out existing ones to control and end the use of mercury, thereby managing its emissions and releases to land and water particularly through regulation of artisanal and small-scale gold mining among other things. However, if those in authority were not paying enough attention to notice the destruction of an entire mountain peak, are they seriously checking into how artisanal miners extract their gold? Unlikely.
In the second case, a farming family was evicted from land they had occupied since before 2004. Their crops and bearing fruit trees were demolished by a miner who reportedly owns a claim for the same plot of land. There are two things wrong with this picture. First there is the destruction of fruit and crops, actual food, to clear the way for gold mining, because, obviously, people can’t eat gold. Consider too that the farmer and his family were given 72 hours to leave, which meant they had no time to reap their crops and trees, which in any case would have been in various stages of growth and not all harvestable.
Second, is the fact that this family had farmed that plot for at least 17 years. Where in all that time was the miner, who supposedly had prior claim? And if the claim was granted subsequent to 2004, why did the authorities not ensure the land was unoccupied before doing so?
Even if the farmer and his family were squatting or trespassing, surely there ought to have been more civility in the way the matter was dealt with. The level of bullyism and crassness involved in riding roughshod over these folks is reprehensible. No amount of gold can make that look good.
There is no denying that gold mining has played a tremendous role in the growth of our economy, but it has also wreaked havoc on the ecosystem, not to mention people’s lives. At some point, we have to stop and consider how to proceed in a sustainable manner. Hopefully, this will be done before the last creek is poisoned and the last habitat obliterated.
