Not just Ukraine, not just rare earths
Aplaneta
Not just Ukraine, not just rare earths
MINING BRUTALISM IS GLOBAL
(Castellano)
No doubt Trump's imposition on Zelenskyy of a contract for Ukraine's rare earths was understood as blackmail, as taking advantage of their situation to carry out a blatant robbery, as yet another episode of US imperialism, but without any dissimulation.The other side of this contract is that it obviously assumes the rights to extract and therefore, being entirely at their mercy, to extract without any obstacle. No environmental regulations, no environmental impacts, no social impacts, nothing at all. Which, added to the alleged abundance of these minerals in Ukraine, means a lot of destruction, a lot of holes, a lot of immense craters, hectares and hectares of swept ecosystems, of desolate landscapes. Coincidence... desolate landscapes that will be added to the hectares and hectares of landscapes desolated by the war. But we know that this is no coincidence. This means what current mining, open-pit mining entails: millions of tons of tailings, discarded treated ore, millions of litres of polluted water, etc. (More on open-pit mining in Abya Yala here).
But as we say, it is not only Ukraine. This scenario is terrible for a planet that is already experiencing an unprecedented proliferation of mining and destruction. Moreover, open-pit mining continues to gobble up the planet. It continues to engulf ecosystems, water and communities all over the world. It continues unstoppable. While affected communities, affected countries rebel and try to stand up to it.
Open-pit mining as the most brutal and obvious form of the effects of extractivism, of its brutalism as defined by the Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbembe and replicated by Amador Fernández Savater: ‘The world has become a gigantic open-pit mine. The function of contemporary powers, says Mbembe, is to ‘make extraction possible’'.
We will cite the most relevant cases that have come to our attention: Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Argentina, Dominican Republic... Although in them we can perceive our greater knowledge due to historical and linguistic connections. Because, as we say, as Mbembe explains, this is a global scourge and many other places also suffer from its hell (Africa, Asia, Oceania).
The case of the Republic of Congo and the disasters caused by coltan mining is well known. Recently, our colleagues at ODG published an exhaustive report on the rare earth mining offensive and the disaster caused also in Madagascar, which we echoed. (By the way, Zorionak (congratulations) to ODG for its 25th anniversary. May you continue for many more years investigating and denouncing so many abuses).
Nor is Europe excluded from the equation. In Europe too, the European Commission has just granted strategic character to 47 extractive projects in different European territories. This means that here too, as Sustrai Erakuntza, EH Bizirik and the corresponding local platforms have been denouncing, the threat is looming, and specifically in the heart of Basque territory, as there are two projects that they have been trying to carry out for a long time, such as the Muga potash project (Zangoza area, also affecting the province of Zaragoza) and the MAGNA magnesite project between Baztan and Esteribar.
These minerals, like rare earths, are considered strategic for the energy and digital transition and also for the arms industry, which they now want to boost again.
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