By Esther Figueroa
Esther Figueroa, Ph.D. is an activist independent film maker, writer, linguist and educator who focuses on the environment, social justice, indigenous knowledges and local content. “Limbo,” her 2014 novel about Jamaica is an environmental murder mystery. Her most recent feature
documentary “Fly Me To The Moon” is about aluminum, modernity, the political economy of our material culture and consumption, and is a call for us to stop destroying the natural world that we all depend upon.
Should we be surprised when our governments sacrifice their citizens for the benefits of corporate profits, personal political gain and the foreign exchange that elites require? In Jamaica rural citizens are sacrificed to extractive industries, whether tourism, mining, prospecting, quarrying and industrial refineries. They don’t have the excess material wealth to fund political campaigns, nor the capacities for huge infrastructure projects with financial kickbacks nor the construction of vanity monuments to which politicians can attach their names. The daily ordinary lives of care, community and survival – of loving and nurturing children, growing food, strengthening relationships over the generations, the perpetuation of indigenous knowledges, cultural creativity, the hopes for better futures – have no value in the global political economy of capital accumulation and greed. Nor does local food security, clean air, clean water, healthy soil, trees, plants, animals – the abundance of other than human life forms. And so over the decades communities have organized and protested and petitioned against the extractive industries that are destroying and damaging their health, lands, crops, homes, schools, churches, graves, livelihoods, their ability to choose where and how they want to live. In response to these actions by the citizenry, the government of Jamaica has consistently sided with the interests of corporations and promoted its own notions of economic development against the wishes and rights of Jamaicans, no matter what the real life and death consequences extraction has on individuals, families, communities, ecologies and the future well-being of the island.
In Jamaica, human rights frameworks and constitutional law are the most recent strategies in the ongoing defense of the people and natural environment against extractive industries. The Jamaican Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedom guarantees rights that the Mining Act and extractive industries daily abridge, including “the right to life, liberty and security of the person”; “the right to freedom of movement…to move around freely throughout Jamaica, to reside in any part of Jamaica”; “the right to enjoy a healthy and productive environment free from the threat of injury or damage from environmental abuse and degradation of the ecological heritage.”
Two constitutional cases against the mining of bauxite in Jamaica by Noranda Jamaica Bauxite Partners II (NJBP II) will be jointly heard November 20 to December 15, 2023. The first constitutional claim was filed on 20 January 2021 and the second constitutional claim filed on 29 July 2022. These cases seek, among other things, to stop the expansion of mining into Special Mining Lease 173 (SML 173) which is located in St. Ann and Trelawny. As part of this legal effort, injunctions against mining were sought as logically mining should cease until the supreme court hears the cases as they are argued on the constitutional and human rights violations mining causes. The first application for an injunction against mining in SML 173 was filed on March 29, 2022 and was refused on July 22, 2022. The second application for an injunction was filed on 29 July, 2022, and was not heard until January 20, 2023, at which point the judge granted an injunction against bauxite mining in SML 173. The bauxite companies named in the court cases and the government of Jamaica are appealing this ruling. An expedited hearing in the Court of Appeal against the injunction is set for March 20 and 21, 2023. Other legal cases cannot find judges and documents keep mysteriously disappearing, yet this appeal miraculously demonstrates that the Jamaican judicial system can be very speedy indeed. Given the government’s overwhelming interest in the injunction being overturned and overarching influence, will there be any chance of independence on the part of the judiciary?
On the 20th of February, 2023, The Daily Gleaner published an article entitled, “Mining
injunction ‘death knell’ for New Day, Noranda.” That article states: “Two bauxite companies have appealed a court order blocking them from mining lands in St. Ann and Trelawny, arguing that their survival is under threat and the Jamaican economy faces major upheaval.” The survival of the bauxite companies was also the basic argument undergirding the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) that led to the Natural Resource Conservation Authority (NRCA) permitting SML 173. The Executive Summary of the EIA states, “There are important bauxite deposits in the SML 173 area which are required for providing bauxite feedstock for NJBP (…), to export markets overseas. (….)This is a major contribution to maintaining NJBP II’s operations .…”
New Day, which took over from Noranda when it declared bankruptcy in 2016, requires the very soil of Jamaica for its corporate survival. The very foundation of our island, the ground we walk on, the plants, animals and minerals that make that soil rich, the trees that bring us rain, all must be obliterated, dug up and shipped away to the USA for the benefit of a foreign corporation in partnership with an autocratic government that is willing to sacrifice the people of Jamaica, the heritage of Jamaica and the future ecological well-being of Jamaica for 2 percent GDP? Furthermore, this is bauxite mining not alumina refining. Conflating bauxite mining with alumina refining inflates the economic value of bauxite mining, both in terms of foreign exchange earnings. salaries and benefits. Agriculture, which is what bauxite mining destroys, has a much larger percent of GDP, in addition to community level benefits. And tourism, which is dependent on Jamaica’s natural beauty and the water that originates in Cockpit Country, has an even higher percent of the GDP and foreign exchange earnings.
The appeal by the bauxite companies and the government of Jamaica in the form of the Attorney General, argues that the judge erred in considering the well-being of the people of Jamaica over the interests of a foreign corporation and the foreign exchange earnings of the government of Jamaica. The judge was supposed to have “considered ‘the real prospect of closure of their operations and that their business would be irreparably ruined.” It is an argument that completely ignores the claimants’ concerns that bauxite mining is leading to early death and to chronic illnesses, that their basic human rights such as their right to life, to choose where they live, to be properly consulted, informed and to make decisions over their lives and futures, their right to food, clean air and clean water have been abridged. That bauxite mining damages their crops, dispossesses them of their lands and their way of life.
The judge’s finding that the residents, “stand to lose their way of life and livelihoods, face deterioration in the quality of their health… losses for which money cannot really compensate.” was contemptuously dismissed by Noranda as based on mere “speculation or unconvincing evidence.” We are asked to care deeply about the survival of the corporation, but not care about the well-being of our fellow Jamaicans and our beloved island? As someone who has been intimately documenting the bauxite-alumina industry in Jamaica for over 16 years, I have proof that what the claimants say about the devastation of their communities, the ruination of the ecologies they depend upon, the disruption of their lives, their livelihoods, their heart break, their material poverty, the bullying and intimidation they face, the lies they have been told, the manipulation and corruption, is absolutely true. I believe them because I am a witness to their truth.
The February 20th Gleaner article states: “The attorney general has been named as a defendant and is vigorously opposing the claim, Finance Minister Dr. Nigel Clarke has confirmed.” No surprise that the government of Jamaica has chosen to side with foreign corporations rather than its own citizens, because that is what extractivist governance always does. Rural Jamaicans are sacrificed and we are supposed to diminish their pain and suffering for the good of The Nation. We are supposed to believe that they are of less value. Much talk about the value of the workers in the bauxite industry. No talk about the value of everyone else, farmers, teachers, students, mothers, fathers, grandparents, children. Just as was done to the Infant and All Age School in Gibraltar St. Ann (where bauxite mining went right up to the fence line of the school, large mining vehicles drove up and down on the access road to the school threatening the safety of the children, the loud noise made learning difficult, the dust from the mining made the children and teachers unwell and at times unable to teach or attend classes, and made the water supply of the school undrinkable), right now in Alva St. Ann, bauxite mining is taking place right beside the Alva Primary and Infant School. Yet we are to believe the industry propaganda that they do not mine near homes and schools. Take a tour through any area being mined and you will see homes precariously perched on the precipices of bauxite pits. Yes some are abandoned because people have had to relocate, but many are still homes to people whose lives are made a living hell because of the extraction of bauxite day and night.
The bauxite companies and the government of Jamaica are used to doing as they please and are not used to resistance that they cannot co-opt, control, or defuse. Communities have spent decades protesting, petitioning, begging, pleading to be heard, to be seen, to be listened to and they have been ignored, played with, and abused. Now we have legal cases that cannot be so easily brushed away. It’s the big league. The world of constitutional rights found in our very own Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedom. The government will explain away the unconstitutionality of bauxite mining as the unfortunate balance that must take place for a sound economy and a bright developmental future. To do that balancing act you must not take into consideration the value of all other types of economic activities, the value of soil, air, water, trees, plants, animals, food security, resilience to climate change, heritage, community, human rights and individual agency. Let us protect Jamaican lives, livelihoods and future over the profits of foreign corporations and a political economy that sacrifices the majority of Jamaicans for the benefit of the few.