Action Agenda
Mining
Sustainable development of Uganda’s considerable mineral resources – such as copper, tin, gold, and cobalt – could help us achieve a more prosperous future. That has not been our history, and today both illegal and legal mining operations cause serious harm to natural and human communities. NAPE’s action agenda includes campaigns against harmful mining projects and advocacy for sustainable mining practices for our long-term benefit.
It is outrageous that the mining interests in Uganda continue to violate our laws with impunity, aided by complicit government officials, profit-hungry parent corporations, and even the World Bank. Miners continue to dump their poisonous wastes into our water and land, encroach into protected lands with government approval, and engage in land-grabbing that violates basic human rights.
Further, this problem will grow even more serious as world prices for virtually all minerals have skyrocketed in recent years because of soaring demand for raw materials by manufacturing nations like China and India. It is imperative that all ventures meet the World Bank’s definition of sustainable mining, which states: “Financially viable mining development that takes place in an environmentally and socially responsible manner with sound governance that provides lasting benefits to the community.”
Limited Export Mining
Mining in Uganda today produces virtually no export earnings – a result of mismanagement and political instability in the 1970s and well into the next decade – and is still held back because of underinvestment in necessary mining infrastructure, including usable rail lines and roads.
Its small export business in gold in recent years comes from illegally-mined gold in the Democratic Republic of Congo and smuggled here. Iron ore production in eastern Uganda, described as “very limited” by Mining Journal, is used domestically, mainly as an additive to scrap steel smelting and special cement production.
Instead, most mining activity in Uganda today produces raw materials for the domestic market – primarily in farming and the construction industry – sand, gravel, clays, limestone, salt, vermiculite, phosphates, gypsum, and silica. With strong construction growth in recent years has come strong demand for locally-available needed minerals. Declining soil fertility because of greater food production is increasing demand for fertilizers derived from mined minerals.
Despite the widespread belief that mining for export minerals has little future in Uganda – copper mines closed long ago – the potential remains great to produce valuable minerals for future earnings. Copper, salt, gold, nickel, platinum, tin, tungsten, and other minerals in great demand worldwide are possible candidates for future mining operations. Gold has been found in deep mines which holds promise, if serious mining companies can be recruited.
Environmental Damage
Small-scale, usually illegal, mining of gold and salt continue to pollute and permanently damage the land, without oversight or accountability. To suggest what is in store for Uganda, there are still lakes in the mountains of California that remain off-limits to fishing and swimming due to uncontrolled mercury use during the California gold rush more than 150 years ago.
So too have large mining companies left unhealed scars, such as Hima Cement, a subsidiary of a French company LaFarge, which mines limestone in Queen Elizabeth National Park, with full government permission. The long-closed copper mines in Rwenzori National Park have created large bare areas incapable of healthy plant life, due to uncontrolled runoff of contaminants. Adding insult to injury, the Kasese Cobalt Company Ltd. now operates a plant extracting cobalt from the waste piles at the closed copper mine that creates new contaminated runoff into the park.
We view with alarm the government’s willingness to permit destructive mining operations, even in protected lands, while tolerating land grabs from intimidated rural landowners, with its oft-repeated claims that these ventures will create prosperity for all. NAPE knows full well that the environmental damage and loss of livelihood by affected communities far outweigh even the inflated economic benefits claimed – and we are determined to change this.
NAPE Actions
In brief, here is NAPE’s action agenda to address this problem:
NAPE regularly monitors mining activity and government actions related to them for compliance with laws and regulations already in force, but largely ignored. We insist on worker safety and fair pay, pollution prevention, restoration of disturbed lands, equitable sharing of mining revenues with affected communities, just compensation for property acquired, prudent financial management and accountability, and full transparency and public participation.
We organize affected communities, providing them with basic, unbiased information about the legal obligations of mining companies and government, the environmental impacts, their own responsibilities to respect their environment, and the skills they need to form coalitions into a single powerful voice.
When necessary, NAPE intervenes with legal challenges against unlawfully issued licenses for mining operations, such as our lawsuit against the mining of limestone by Hima Cement Co., owned by the Lafarge Group, at Dura in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
NAPE has several times formally petitioned international organizations and lenders to follow international best practices and to enforce their standards and protections of affected communities in making key decisions about mining projects. Other resources at our disposal are regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the World Bank and other international lenders, international treaties and conventions, and even voluntary industry standards, such as ISO 14000 environmental management standards.
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