Congo: Thousands of miners could face poverty

Inside the headquarters of Caritas Bunia in northern DR Congo, 12 of us sat round an enormous table in the fading light.

Representatives of CAFOD, Caritas, Congolese environmental charity Ocean, local civil society network CdC and academics from South Africa had gathered to discuss the present and future social and environmental impacts of the AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) mine site in the Ituri district.

This site, or “Concession 40″ as it is officially called, is the size of Belgium – approximately. And although no one knows just how much gold there is in its earth, it has enough to have attracted 20,000 artisanal (small-scale) miners - as a conservative estimate - and their families to come dig and pan and scrape the gold ore out of the ground.

These miners include ex-combatants from DR Congo’s brutal and bloody conflicts. With fighting in the Ituri district more or less finished for now, these men and boys have turned their hands to gold-mining to feed themselves and their families.

Even though AGA has not started full-scale production, the presence of gold is having an impact throughout the region.

Already 30 miles from Mongbwalu – the small town in the concession where CAFOD will stay, the River Nizi flows red-brown with silt and residue from the movement of earth by the artisanal miners.

Once the ore is collected the artisanals actively use poisonous chemicals such as mercury to extract the gold from its ore.

The mercury is often burned off with a blowtorch so the gold can be recovered – leaving the miners to breath the toxic fumes. Mercury is especially harmful if it enters the food chain where it can accumulate in animals such as fish, which are in turn eaten by the local community.

Large-scale industrial mining also uses devastating toxic chemicals, such as cyanide. AGA has not decided whether it intends to use the common heap leaching method of gold extraction on Concession 40.

The method is very simple - massive piles of rock ore are sprayed with cyanide solution which binds with the gold and drains out for collection.

In Honduras, CAFOD has been working with communities on another gold mine (not owned by AGA) where heap leaching was used, and analysis of well water and local streams shows levels of cyanide way above WHO guidelines.

High levels of arsenic lead and mercury have also been found in the blood of locals living near the mines – including children - who are suffering health problems, including respiratory, skin and gastro-intestinal diseases, which they believe is a result of drinking water polluted by the mine.

Despite recent research into alternative ways to extract gold from its ore, cyanide heap leaching is still considered one of the cheapest and most effective.

And so it will continue to be until the costs to the mining companies of damaging people and the environment have a dollar sign next to them.

In addition to the present and future potential environmental impacts of the mine site, the arrival of migrant families to rural Ituri in search of jobs could take a heavy social toll on local communities.

Already weak infrastructures may be pushed to the limit and new shantytowns may spring up, housing the incoming gold workers and their families.

With this mass movement of miners may come other problems including prostitution, sexual exploitation of children, HIV and AIDS, and family disruption, as miners take second wives in their new town.

But what is most worrying for the region is that when AGA starts production in 2011, they will most likely not be able to employ the 20,000 miners presently working on the concession.

Large scale modern mining is not labour-intensive. In situations like this, the vast majority of artisanal miners are usually displaced from the concession and their livelihoods lost.

Despite their artisanal mining being illegal, these are thousands of people who may be left without work and a way to feed their dependents.

Estimates from local people put the real number of artisanal miners nearer 100,000 including around 10,000 unemployed and displaced ex-combatants.

When we met with the deputy district commissioner in Bunia earlier today, he spoke of his fear of serious conflict if the situation is not handled with great care and transparency.

With so much at stake CAFOD and its partners are travelling to Mongbwalu to carry out a benchmark study of potential environmental and social impacts from the AGA mine.

After several hours hammering out our itinerary and methodology wishlists for the next days, we left the near darkness of the Caritas office.

And so tomorrow we travel to Mongbwalu – only some 60 miles north, but five hours by dirt road.

Posted by PascaleP

Pascale is travelling to the Democratic Republic of Congo to visit AngloGold Ashanti’s mine site in Mongbwalu to collect stories for the Unearth Justice campaign.

She is then heading to Goma, on the border with Rwanda, to see how the £2m CAFOD supporters raised for DR Congo has been spent.