Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

48 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
investment, mentioned by Ernst & Young, ostensibly aimed at
bringing minerals’ supply and demand into balance, have yet
to be developed, however, let alone deployed.
Relying on China (and to a lesser extent, India) to stimulate
new spending, requires that these two huge emerging
economies achieve accelerating levels of “growth”—albeit
ones which are conventionally-defined, rather than necessarily
suiting criteria set by the UNDP’s Human Development
Index.
China’s rate of growth has, however, been progressively
accelerating downwards. The state recorded growth in GDP
(Gross Domestic Product) of 13 percent in 2007, but this fell
to 9.2 percent in 2011. According to a recent forecast, China
is likely to have expanded economic growth in the second
quarter of 2012 by only 7.6 percent on the previous year—“its
weakest performance since the 2008-09 financial crisis.” 17
India’s GDP growth rate slipped from a previous high
of nine percent to 6.7 percent in 2009. As with its vast Asian
neighbor, during the first quarter of 2012 the rate slumped
even further, to only 5.3 percent. In the meantime, socioeconomic
and environmental pressures in both countries,
aimed at curbing the amount and extent of new mineral ventures,
have been mounting. For example, India’s biggest-ever
proposed extractive project—by South Korea’s POSCO, for
an integrated iron-steel venture in Orissa—has had its dimensions
cut back, and construction postponed by no fewer than
seven years, thanks largely to local and national opposition. 18
Outrages relating to massive child lead poisoning, and
worker fatalities at numerous Chinese coal pits, have led to
many abrupt closures. The administrations of both Asian
mega-states also acknowledge the urgency of limiting their
contributions to adverse climate change, even though India
has made far less effort than China to put its money where its
mouth is.
While the governments of neither India nor China have
paid much regard to the Kyoto Climate Treaty under the 2009
Copenhagen Climate Accord, the Chinese administration undertook
to cut between 40 percent and 45 percent of carbon-