Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Chapter 1.1: Overview of Impacts of Extractive Industries on Indigenous Peoples
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been described as “the most destructive project on Earth.” 19
The oil lies under boreal forests covering an area the size of
England, with four barrels of water required to extract one
barrel of oil. The extraction process contaminates the water,
and creates enormous toxic tailing ponds. Warner Nazile, a
member of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation complained: “It’s
literally a toxic wasteland—bare ground and black ponds and
lakes—tailing ponds—with an awful smell.” 20
People living below the High Andes and other mountain
regions, are often heavily dependent on snow or gradual
glacier melt, as opposed to rainfall, for their water. Mining
activities in high mountains, such as that proposed by Barrick
Gold in Pascua Lama, at the border of Chile and Argentina,
are blamed for increasing the melting of glaciers and polluting
vital water resources and extracting excessive quantities of
water primarily for industry use to the detriment of local farmers.
21 In the case of the controversial San Cristóbal silver, lead
and zinc mine in Potosí Province, Bolivia, the open-pit mine
already uses 50,000 liters of water a day in a region where
there is only an average 100 mm of precipitation annually.
The mitigation provided by the company, partly owned by
Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, is not enough to compensate
local indigenous communities, who primarily rely on llama
farming, salt harvesting and the production of quinoa grain.
Owing to the dramatic reduction of mine-affected springs in
South West Potosí, indigenous communities now had to walk
their lamas some 55 km for water. These concerns are growing
with the proposed advent of large-scale lithium mining in the
Salar de Uyuni salt-flats in the Potosí Department. 22 In another
example, the Magadi Soda Company, Tata Chemicals,
mines and processes soda from the environmentally-sensitive
Lake Natron on Maasai lands in Kenya. Water use is estimated
at 106,000 liters of fresh water per hour, which outstrips the
needs of 40,000 livestock in all of Magadi division. Access to
water is a major concern, with the community having become
dependent on the company for a rationed water supply. 23
The volume of waste rock involved, its chemical composition
and the addition of often toxic chemical separators frequently
result in adverse affects on water quality, despite the