Where There Is No Company: Indigenous Peoples, Sustainability, and the Challenges of Mid-Stream Mining Reforms in Guyana's Small-Scale Gold Sector

Abstract

Much of the hype behind ‘sustainable mining’ elaborates ‘best practices’ using a spatial and temporal framework primarily applicable to large-scale, company-driven mines unfolding in the future. This approach confines already producing fields to peripheral concerns and obscures artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) production from mainstream debates on sustainable mining and indigenous rights. The article provides an overview of mining reforms on multiple scales and a case study of Guyana's gold sector. Looking closely at ASM processes in the Upper Mazaruni river basin, the traditional homeland of the indigenous Akawaio and Arekuna, the evidence reveals a compelling case for denying the hype of sustainable mining. Oddly enough, indigenous involvement with mining presents a unique opportunity to rethink progressive ASM designs for two key reasons. First, vested interests in long-term survival on the same land are a qualitative advantage for overcoming the limits of short-term, fragmented engagements with mid-stream ASM activity. Second, the embedded ecological knowledge of indigenous communities can inform more inclusive, place-based interdisciplinary frameworks for reforming ASM and building lasting solutions through a holistic approach.

Keywords:

• Guyana
• indigenous
• interdisciplinary
• mining
• sustainability

Notes on contributor

Logan Hennessy is Associate Professor of Social Sciences in the Liberal Studies Program at San Francisco State University. His research interests include interdisciplinary analyses of mining reform, indigenous peoples movements, United Nations climate change policy, and REDD+ initiatives.

Notes

1. Negotiations for the Voisey's Bay Nickel mine, for example, lasted five years and were a catalyst for securing land rights for the Labrador Inuit and the Innu Nation.

2. Maroons are former African slaves who escaped from plantations to establish their own settlements in the interior of Suriname. They retained much of their African culture through territorial defense over the past four centuries and are now major players in contentions over mining and hydroelectric development.

3. The World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, the World Conservation Union and the Smithsonian Institute are all promoting the diversity and ongoing discovery of new species as top priorities for protecting this region.

4. The Guyana government had a 5 per cent share in ownership but was not part of regular management practices. Cambior owned a 60 per cent share, while Golden Star had 35 per cent.

5. This research was part of a larger project examining economic transformations and Amerindian mobilisation. Additional Guyana-based research and interviews that informed this article were conducted with the GCMC, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Amerindian Research Unit at the University of Guyana; the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology; the Bureau of Statistics; the Bank of Guyana; the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs; the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports; the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development; the Guyana Forestry Commission; the World Wildlife Foundation; the Guyana Organisation of Indigenous Peoples and the Amerindian Peoples Association.

6. In addition to the primary research gathered for this project and this section of the article, these patterns of negative socio-environmental impacts on Amerindians have also been extensively documented in the Upper Mazaruni region by the Amerindian Peoples Association, specifically in their book (UMDC et al. 2000), and in a recent report on mining and indigenous peoples in Guyana as a whole (Colchester et al. 2002).

7. In Jawalla, residents reported an average of 35–45 cases of malaria per month.

8. Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007, the UNDRIP says in Article 19 that governments shall obtain the FPIC of indigenous communities, ‘before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them’.

9. One potential resource is the Hesperian Foundation's Community Guide to Environmental Health. This book contains a chapter devoted to mining-related environmental and health problems. It includes simple descriptions for using mercury retorts and is available in multiple languages (Conant and Fadem 2009).

10. To get a sense of how thoroughly and adamantly miners oppose environmental restrictions, the GGDMA recently submitted an outlandish policy proposal for an unrestricted exemption against any future environmental controls over mining in 1.6 million acres (Stabroek News 2012). This was crafted in an open letter from the GGDMA to the President and other government agencies in April 2012, and it contained 1800 signatures of miners from Mahdia, Port Kaituma and Imbaimadai (Stabroek News 2012). Later in July, 2012, the government faced one of the larger mobilisations of the mining lobby in years when they tried to remove subsidies on electricity in the bauxite town of Linden. Protestors clashed with authorities over several days, leaving three dead (Richards 2012a, 2012b).

11. Swenson et al.’s (2011) analysis of the current gold rush indicates a loss of 28,200 hectares of forests and wetlands over a six-year period from three mining sites and associated settlements in the Madre de Dios region of Peru. At a combined rate of over 5 per cent, gold mining is rapidly eliminating forests with no clear understanding of long-term consequences. This estimate of forest loss in Peru is lower than the GGDMA's ‘high’ annual estimates of 20,000 acres in their proposal for oversight exemption to the Guyana government.

12. See the Kari-Oca II Declaration, The Rio+20 Indigenous Peoples' International Conference on Sustainable Development and Self-Determination Declaration, and the Terra Livre Declaration of the People's Summit. All three are accessible on the Forest People's Programme website: http://www.forestpeoples.org/tags/rio20-united-nations-conference-sustainable-development. As witnessed by the author, representatives of Guyana's Amerindian Peoples Association were active participants in these fora.

13. Such teams would have to open themselves to community-driven priorities, guidance, data collection and consent, and would need to be staffed with equal numbers of community experts in TEK, to begin the full recovery of ASM-affected ecosystems.