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ENVIRONMENT: A Not So Golden Gift for Valentine’s Day

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 2004 (IPS) - If you are planning to give your loved one a golden gift for Valentine’s Day this year – think twice, suggest pressure groups fighting for a cleaner environment and higher social standards. Gold is dirty, they say.

The Washington-based Mineral Policy Centre and Oxfam America on Wednesday launched a campaign to change the way gold is mined, bought and sold, calling it one of the world’s dirtiest industries.

The groups also released a report, ‘Dirty Metals: Mining, Communities and the Environment’, which paints a grim picture of the massive pollution, earth-scarring open pits, devastating health impacts, dangers to workers and, in many cases, human rights abuses that have become a feature of gold and metals mining.

"Gold doesn’t seem so shiny when you consider the colossal damage gold mining inflicts," said Payal Sampat of the Centre, also known as Earthworks. "We are asking consumers to consider the real cost of gold, and we’re enlisting their help to put an end to mining practices that endanger people and ecosystems."

The groups say the industry carries a legacy of heavily documented human and environmental damage.

"Most consumers don’t realise that in developing countries gold mining is associated with protests, human rights abuses and even imprisonment, along with environmental devastation," said the groups’ joint statement.

Before gold reaches consumers’ hands it goes through a lengthy process of extracting, leaching and smelting, all potentially harmful to human beings and the environment.

For example, after gold is extracted from mines, the gold ore is crushed, piled into huge heaps and sprayed with cyanide, causing the gold to leach out of the ore.

Some mines use several tons of cyanide per day, says the report. A dose of cyanide the size of a grain of rice can be fatal, it adds.

People living around the Yanacocha gold mine in northern Peru, the most profitable gold mine in South America, say they have to live with the effects of water polluted with cyanide, which has destroyed pasturelands and sickened their livestock.

In Ghana, thousands of villagers have no access to clean drinking water because of cyanide spills in Wassa.

In October 2001, a tailings dam burst at the Tarkwa gold mine in Wassa in the west of the African country, sending thousands of cubic metres of mine waste into the Asuman River, contaminating it with cyanide and heavy metals.

In the United States, gold mines generate waste equivalent in weight to nearly nine times the trash produced by all U.S. cities and towns combined.

According to the report, making a single 18-karat gold ring that weighs less than one ounce could produce 20 tonnes of mine waste.

"It’s an amazing figure, but it’s true," Sampat said. "And that’s what gold consumers do not know and should know."

The report also adds, "mine waste has turned groundwater thousands of times more acidic than battery acid".

The groups also fault the industry for its labour conditions. They charge that metals mining employs less than one-tenth of one percent of the global workforce, but consumes seven to ten percent of the world’s energy, yet most gold is not used for essential services.

A massive 80 percent of the mineral is fashioned into jewellery, while most of the rest is bought by investors or used in electronics.

Gold diggers are mostly motivated by huge profits, the groups say. In the United States, a piece of gold jewellery typically sells for four times more than the value of gold it contains.

The groups quote Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, a mining activist from the western district of Ghana, where 30,000 people were displaced by gold mining between 1990 and 1998. He says his people faced "beatings, imprisonment and murder" for standing up for community rights against multinational mining companies that work in the area.

"We want buyers of gold to support our rights and demand that mining companies adhere to higher ethical standards, Owusu-Koranteng said.

Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, is a major occasion for sales of gold jewellery in the United States. The groups say they will mark it with the release of a postcard condemning gold mining.

They will also distribute Valentine’s cards with the message, "Don’t tarnish your love with dirty gold", in front of major jewellery and watch stores, including Cartier and Piaget on 5th Avenue in midtown New York City.

The campaign is also targeting sales of the class rings that are purchased by graduating university students Activists say they will hand out campaign material at several universities, including Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Temple, Kent State and MIT..

In coming months the groups will also launch speaking tours with citizens from communities affected by mining.

The top 10 U.S. jewellery retailers include Wal-Mart, whose sales in 2001 were 2.5 billion dollars, Zale (1.7 billion dollars), Sterling (1.4 billion) and Sears (1.1 billion).

"What we’re asking for is reasonable, fair and possible," said Keith Slack of Oxfam America.

"The symbol of your enduring love should not have to come at the expense of clean drinking water or respect for human rights. It’s also just good business."