“One of the world's most remote hill tribes will learn next week whether it faces being evicted from its forest homeland to make way for an opencast bauxite mine run by one of Britain's biggest listed companies.”
* Bauxite is the chief source of aluminum.
“According to activists, the projects threaten densely forested areas that are home to tiger, Indian bison, bear, and elephant. The affected human population includes impoverished tribal communities, some of whom charge that Vedanta’s projects are illegal, and that the state and central governments are colluding with the company to circumvent environmental protections.”
This sounds awful familiar, how many times in history has another group irrevocably changed native people’s lands and the environment. By now I would think that the price of stripping the land is not worth the environmental damage caused. But, if there is profit to be had someone will step up to take it. The natives of this community revere their land as a god. Their respect of the land has allowed their tribe to retain the land’s natural resources. Mining will surely alter the forest ecosystem, displace many people and animals and cause other environmental stress. It is no surprise that in a short period a huge corporation will strip their mountain of its valuable resources.
The mining corporation, Vedanta Resources, claims that it will contribute to the native tribe by building roads, schools, organizing health care and improved sanitation. The cost of those services is probably trivial when compared to the profit to be gained from the mining. Vedanta claims that the land will be restored to its natural condition after mining. Planting some grass or a few trees is no way near the natural state of land prior to mining. Those who support the mining projects speak highly of the good work of the foundations set up by the mining companies to help the poor people of the village. Helping the people is a good thing but why does it take a profit incentive to want to help them at all. No matter how much good they do, they are likely causing equal or greater detriment to the community and environment by mining.
When things like this are so easily justified, it makes me feel that the future is pretty bleak. Greed always seems to win over common sense. Eventually there will be no choices left and it may be too late for our future generations.
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