The Gaia Foundation’s new report – UnderMining Agriculture: How the Extractives Industries Threaten our Food Systems exposes the hidden costs of mining on food, water, land, air and climate, showing how each is increasingly affected by toxins as the global land and water grab intensifies. The report is a timely call to action for all food justice and anti mining organisations to come together with a harder line against the extractives sector. The world’s food production and millions of small farmers and communities are under threat.
Case studies from around the world illustrate how mining is destroying the conditions essential for healthy and productive agriculture as communities testify to experiencing livestock deaths, soil pollution, acidic water supplies, desertification of agricultural lands, and being forcibly displaced. Promises of job creation and economic growth have been shown to be exaggerated, short-lived and only benefiting the few, whilst the lasting impact on the communities and ecosystems they depend upon are yet to be fully analysed and exposed.
Livelihoods Lost vs. Jobs Created
Mining may provide some jobs for a few decades, but its impacts can leave a landscape and community livelihoods ruined for hundreds of years. The Rosia Montana gold mine in Romania claimed it would create 900 jobs, but in fact mining operations (relying on 40 tonnes of cyanide per day, 13 times the total amount currently used across Europe), would destroy
20,000 jobs in agriculture, tourism and other services due to the effects on landscape, cultural heritage and biodiversity. In South Africa’s Limpopo province, coal production would drain and divert water sources and 11,000 people would lose their livelihoods.
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