ENVIRONMENT: Mining Firm ‘Biggest Threat To Dominica Since Columbus’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mark Horstman

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 26 1996 (IPS) - Ten percent of the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, including about a third of the country’s protected rain forests, are under threat from copper exploration by an Australian mining company, according to a new report.

The report, released last weekend by California-based Project Underground and the Melbourne-based Australian Conservation Foundation (ACP), echoes the concerns of local activists, who have denounced Broken Hill Proprietary’s plans as “the biggest threat to Dominica since Columbus.”

BHP had been quietly negotiating for the exclusive rights to explore for copper in Dominica, with the hopes of establishing the first-ever commercial mining operation on the island.

Popularly known as the “Big Australian” in Australia where it is the country’s largest company, BHP negotiated an out-of-court settlement in June valued at 350 million dollars with landholders in Papua New Guinea. They had sued the company for massive environmental damage to the Fly River stemming from the operation of the Ok Tedi copper mine.

Local groups in Dominica were outraged when they discovered BHP’s plans and its previous history.

“This mine is the biggest threat to Dominica since Columbus. Environmental disasters of the scale in Papua New Guinea or the multi-billion litre cyanide spill at the Omai gold mine in Guyana would wipe out Dominica,” says Atherton Martin, president of the Dominica Conservation Association.

Dominica, home to 75,000 people, is a mountainous island of volcanic origin some 740 square kilometres in area. More than two- thirds of the island is covered by tropical forests, the largest and last remaining area of primary oceanic rain forest in the Caribbean and home to more than 1,200 species of plants.

The forests are also home to two endangered parrots found only on Dominica. One of these — the Imperial Parrot — is Dominica’s national emblem and is featured on the country’s flag.

With rainfall of up to 10 metres a year in the central highlands, steep terrain, and at least four volcano eruptions and hurricanes every 15 years, Dominica presents considerable risks to mining companies who want to prevent pollution, according to the Project Underground-ACP report, ‘The Big (Ugly) Australian Comes to the Caribbean’.

BHP has applied for exploration permits covering an area of 72 square kilometres centred on protected mountain rain forest. If the exploration application is approved by the Ministry of Agriculture, the permits would allow BHP to cut roads and drill in two important forest reserves.

These rain forests, the report notes, were protected under the Constitution until a new Mines and Minerals Act was rushed through Parliament earlier this year without public discussion.

Phillip Pyle, BHP’s exploration manager for the Western Hemisphere, told Trinidadian newspapers that his company assisted the government of Dominica by “providing examples of mining laws from around the region, but we did not provide any of the drafting language.”

This is very similar to the approach BHP took in Papua New Guinea, says Danny Kennedy, coordinator for Project Underground. Kennedy, an Australian citizen, has worked extensively in Papua New Guinea on environmental issues.

“Papua New Guineans experienced direct intervention by BHP in their legislative affairs when BHP drafted legislation for the PNG Government to make it a criminal offence for citizens to take legal action against mining companies,” he says.

“Having been busted in Papua New Guinea,” Kennedy adds, “BHP is now exporting its malpractice to the other side of the planet.”

If its pending permit requests are granted, BHP would have exclusive rights to explore for copper and other minerals for three years. Company officials estimate that exploration would cost 500,000 dollars per year, including 300 dollars for government permits.

BHP, which established a Texas-based subsidiary to carry out its operations in Dominica, BHP Minerals International Explorations, would also have exclusive mining rights, with the government receiving 3 percent of royalties from whatever mines are established.

In addition to posing major environmental threats, the Project Underground-ACP report says that mining by a multinational company with annual profits 15 times larger than Dominica’s national economy could drastically alter the development path of the small country.

Currently, the nation’s economy is dominated by agriculture, particularly bananas and coconut products. But nature-based tourism is a rapidly growing industry.

Mining would replace these sustainable, locally-owned industries with a single, foreign-owned extractive industry that would dominate land use, the report says.

Some 2,000 direct and indirect jobs in the tourism industry could be jeopardised if a large copper mine in the central forests damaged the forests and compromised Dominica’s ‘Nature Island’ image.

Project critics also warn that mining operations would threaten the survival of some 3,400 Caribs, one of the last surviving indigenous Amerindian cultures in the Caribbean, whose territory is downstream from BHP’s concessions.

Martin says that Dominica Conservation Association, which is opposed to all large-scale mining in Dominica, has requested assistance from activists in other countries in an effort to organise an international campaign against the BHP proposal.

The initial appeal, he says, was made directly to BHP shareholders, who need to consider that whatever they gain in Dominica will be “at the expense of a entire nation, an entire people, and one of the last remaining tropical environments in the world.”

“If that is what shareholders want as a legacy, then go forward with the mining in Dominica, but over our dead bodies,” Martin continues. “I believe there is a bond that exists between the people of Dominica and our natural rivers, waterfalls, lakes, forests and soils, that cannot, and will not, be broken.”