2012
We will soon face a huge wall.
Michel Bégin January 23rd 2012.
I am so impressed to realize that only a few people seems to make the link between all the actual conflicts and their effects on the human community and its environment, and above all, the catastrophic impacts that will occur because of it very soon. For almost 30 years I have tried to make wake up calls, like many others of my kind around the world, to cry out loud to anyone who will listen that we will hit a wall and it is almost criminal not to react and mobilize around the world to take action immediately.
I understand that the news media are manipulated and will not disclose the scale and urgency of the problems we will all be facing in a few years or months. But you, my brothers and sisters of the world, do you know that we pollute so much as to set all the prerequisites to cause our own extinction. We all live as if all these things did not exist. Tomorrow famine will settle on the planet, the economy will collapse and we will quickly deplete the majority of natural resources that Mother Nature took millions of years to create. There will be nothing left for our own children in a few months, if I can say, since for example 10 years represents only 120 months.
I still have trust in the future because our children are so intelligent and smart, but we must take action immediately, without further delay. It is essential to unite all around the world to start putting all the resources available and all the required efforts in place, as soon as possible, to find new alternatives. New sources of clean and renewable energies, ways to curb global warming, solutions to feed the world and generate a new prosperity built on basic principles that are consistent with the notion of goodness. Create a new entity that will top all governments around the world and claim that the well-being of humans is the first priority to achieve, not the enrichment of some at the expense of all others. WE WILL, DRAMATICALY SOON, BE FORCED TO DO IT AND THE CONDITIONS WILL ONLY HAVE WORSENED, LEAVING US WITH EVEN MORE DIFFICULTIES TO DO SO.
Educate yourself, investigate. Ask, ask questions. If we continue to make war, the global economy will continue to decline. If the economy continues to collapse, there will be fewer resources to fund research projects. If we do not do extensive overall research, environmental difficulties will increase. If environmental problems increase, global temperature will go up and water levels will rise, entire nations will be swallowed up. If the temperature rises even by only one degree, droughts of a new scale will appear. Fires, such as the southern United States and Australia, will multiply. The fire will burn even more forests and the temperature will rise even further. The drinking water needs will increase and new wars to fill them will be added to those existing already in the world today. Plastics and plastic wastes that have invaded our oceans will kill all marine life and those who depend on it for their own subsistence. This is already a reality on which it is very urgent to act. Oil reserves of the entire planet are the subject of desire because world leaders know that there are not enough quantities to respond to de increasing demand for very long. Every expert and leader of the oil industry knows very well and they are already in a state of panic. Options to grow new cultures, either in water or on land, to create new fuels will become a threat to human food, so they feel much unarmed to face the problem. Don’t you think that the urgency is real and concrete enough? Do you love your children, because if you do not act now you send them directly to hell and death?
Copy and send this text to your friends on the planet and translate it in all languages. We have now a huge communication machine ... let us use it for the future of humanity and love for our children.
Michel Bégin, president
The International Youth Association (Canada XXI) Inc.
2011
World Social Forum in Dakar
Footprints and paradoxes of Canadian mining in the DRC
Mikhael Missakabo
2008-11-20, Issue 407
Mikhael Missakabo reveals the extent to which Canadian mining companies are benefiting from instability and weak institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo to reap huge profits while paying little attention to the ecological and human cost of their actions. These companies have become adept at hedging their bets in the ongoing conflict and negotiating contracts that literally impoverish the host country. All that remains in their wake is environmental and economic and social ruin.
Without doubt, public or private discussion about Africa’s socio-economic context rarely revolves around foreign investment. However, at the 2006 Indaba, a senior official from a Canadian mining concern urged his colleagues to take advantage of the ‘unusual conditions’ and venture to invest in the DRC. This in spite of the dire press reportage coming out of that tortured country. Cape Town formed an idyllic backdrop far removed from the mining areas of Africa, for the Indaba, an annual meeting bringing together the different players in the mining industry interested in African adventure. Strange, and yet true, this illustration of the paradoxes that characterise relations between Africa and the West.
Without delving too deeply into this paradox, we will attempt to cast light on the consequences of Canadian mining operations in the DRC. Their numerical superiority makes them stand out. It is clear that every Canadian mining company leaves a footprint. This footprint is not merely ecological, but also socio-economic. Unfortunately, this is not all; alas, these effects are felt even at the level of human rights.
By ‘unusual conditions’, this official was referring to the favourable juridico-legal and fiscal environment offered by the DRC government to those investing in the mining sector. The DRC is considered a fiscal and juridical paradise for mining companies. The reasons for this are both multiple and intricate.
The DRC has been steeped in crisis for the last two decades. The country is abundantly blessed by nature. The climate is ideal, water is plentiful, fauna and flora abound. The ground is replete with vast mineral reserves. However, the commercial exploitation of these resources has not translated into development. In other words, the living standards of the Congolese people have not improved. On the contrary, one may venture that mining has in fact led to the deterioration of the people’s living standards.
Mining has always dominated the DRC’s economic landscape, and served as its main driving force. Mining contributes approximately 70% of the country’s annual budget. Gécamines is the largest mining concessionaire in Katanga. Today, however, Gécamines is defunct as a result of the mismanagement and looting of the Mobutu regime. Given that Gécamines was previously the largest employer in Katanga, one can imagine the effects of its collapse. Following the collapse, the government took the decision to allow artisan and small-scale mining of copper/cobalt. The justification for this was the creation of a Congolese middle-class to serve as a conveyor-belt for harmonious development. When Gécamines closed down, it was necessary to ‘create jobs’ for former employees who had been laid off. Ten years earlier, a decision had been taken to liberalise artisan and small-scale diamond mining in Kasai. Sadly, the artisan and small-scale mining of Copper/cobalt, diamonds and coltan benefits small capitalist expatriates who use Congolese as middlemen and labourers.
Under pressure for the World Bank, the government developed the Mining Code to guide the liberalisation of the mining sector. By and large, the Code concretises the liberalisation of the sector. The playing field may be level, but the players are not of the same calibre, or in the same class for that matter. Consequently, mining companies are making a beeline for the DRC. One would no doubt expect abuses, blunders and pitfalls. However, the Congo has ended up falling victim to its own initiative. Forced to negotiate from a position of weakness, the government has been issuing lop-sided contracts. In some cases, the contracts actually gave the concessionaires the very means to subvert the aims of liberalisation. This sabotage is in turn stifling the growth of the indigenous middle-class. Following pressure from international NGOs and Congolese civil society, the contracts were reviewed in an effort to correct the imbalances. Apparently, the mining companies use loopholes in the mining code, and other means to safeguard their interests.
According to Alain Denault, author of ‘Noir Canada: Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique’, Canadian mining firms operating in Africa are involved in levels of abuse worse than those perpetrated by the former colonial empires. In the early 1990s, just after the World Bank-inspired privatisation wave, Canadian firms were profiting from the Mobutu regime. Shortly after, Laurent Kabila’s rebellion erupted. Within a few weeks, the conflict was full-blown. The mining firms – including the Canadians – went over to the winning side. Mining contracts signed by Kabila were soon distributed. By the same stroke, Kabila received the financial means to support his war effort, and de facto international economic legitimacy, even before the fall of the Mobutu regime. For Canadian companies like Banro Corporation or Barrick Gold, so long as business remained lucrative after as before, the regime did not matter.
Banro, Kinross-Forrest, Barrick Gold, Emaxon, Lundin (Tenke Fungurume Mining), Mindev, and Anvil Mining are among the more prominent Canadian companies involved. Some of these provide us with exemplars of the Canadian firms’ footprints in the DRC. An exhaustive list of these companies involved would be long and assorted. Such would include both private and publicly funded Canadian companies, operating bank accounts and holding addresses in tax havens. While some are privately owned, others are listed on several Canadian stock exchanges. Toronto’s TSX is the more attractive of the stock exchanges because it tends to be less demanding with regard to mining companies and their declared values. Some analysts have even asserted that, unlike the American exchanges, the TSX turns a blind eye to baseline evaluations of exploratory mining. These allow mining companies to speculate on the real value of resources and increase their profits exponentially. This little digression helps to explain the situation with Gécamines.
In Katanga and Kasaï Oriental, the local economies are dependent on mining. Gécamines is a parastatal operating in Katanga and as mentioned, it is in decline, and one of the first consequences of this is that employees are going without salaries. In addition, there are a lot of small to medium companies sub-contracted to Gécamines that are now suffering. To avoid open rebellion Mobutu liberalised the mining sector. Artisan and small-scale mining boomed and with this came ecological disaster and rock falls that claimed lives.
FOOTPRINTS
Mutoshi is a small neighbourhood of Kolwezi in Katanga. Since 2007 Mutoshi has seen a gold-rush, with thousands of artisan and small-scale miners, many of them former Gécamines employees, arriving to pan a rich abandoned mine. This mine is adjacent to the little town. Following a joint-venture with the Canadian firm Anvil Mining, operations resumed here and the artisan and small-scale miners were chased off. Desperately seeking a means of survival, these miners carried on mining, following rich seams located under houses and streets in Mutoshi. One can imagine the net result: homes and roads in the town under assault by artisan and small-scale miners.
Today, Canadian firms own in excess of $300 billion worth of assets in the DRC, most of it acquired through dodgy contracts signed with mining parastatals. Following pressure from civil society, opposition parties and international NGOs, the government has revisited some of these contracts. One particular contract between Gécamines and Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM) is worth a mention. This Canadian company (a branch of Lundin Mining) controls an area containing 13 identified fields that together hold the planet’s largest reserves of coltan. In 2007 TFM’s capital investments were estimated at $900 million. In 2008, Gécamines suddenly realised that TFM had increased its capital investment to $1.75 billion, and an extra $850 million was ploughed in without informing or consulting its principle partner. TFM underhandedly decreased Gécamines’ share of the joint-venture from 45% to 17.5%, using improvements to infrastructure and rising costs as an excuse. TFM is thus over-invested in the operation, considering that the Mining Code allows investors to recoup their initial outlay on a sliding scale. This means that TFM will be able to recoup its over-investment within the first few years of production, and during this time, Gécamines and the government will get nothing.
Other Canadian companies have also benefited from this scenario. A contract signed in 2005 between Gécamines and Kinross-Forrest granted 75% of the shared value to the latter. According to the contract the capital outlay, including any interest accrued, can be recouped in less than five years after the start of effective production. Kinriss-Forrest is thus helping itself to the lion’s share of production at the expense of the Congolese state and its citizens. Another Canadian company Emmaxon has also delivered a masterstroke by obtaining exclusive rights to diamond mining.
Anvil Mining operates three sites in Katanga, but it is the Dikulushi one that caught the attention of the Commission. A clause in the 1998 contract granted Anvil and its sub-contractors an exemption from taxes and royalties for a period of 20 years. As for the Mutoshi site, the consequences are clear, with residents sacrificing their town and their homes to mine copper/cobalt. Ecological impact is certainly not a key concern for artisan and small-scale miners. For some mining companies, human rights are not a major concern. In 2005, Anvil Mining is said to have provided logistical support for the transportation of army troops during an operation in which civilian lives were lost. Among the dead were scores of women and children.
This year the town of Likasi witnessed violent confrontations between authorities and artisan and small-scale miners, resulting in one death and 32 injured. The cause of the clash was the expulsion of the miners from an old abandoned Gécamines mine in Kamatanda (about seven kilometres from Likasi) that had subsequently been transferred to a Canadian company.
The ecological impact of mining is becoming increasingly evident. A large quantity of chemical effluent from the mines is contaminating the water table. Streams and rivers are littered with chemical waste. A few days ago, the nationwide station Radio Okapi broadcast a worrying report by the Centre for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law condemning the pollution of drinking water in Lubumbashi, a city of four million and the capital of Katanga. The NGO points the finger at mining companies and highlights ‘the occurrence of congenital birth defects at various hospitals in the town. This could be a consequence of drinking polluted water.’
THE PARADOX
Approximately 60% of mining companies operating in Africa are Canadian-owned or funded with Canadian capital. Everywhere that mining takes place in Africa there are serious problems. These challenges are not only socio-economic. They are also ecological, and the impact on human rights. Obviously, Africa does not deserve that which is good for Canada, an attitude which seems to pervade the decisions and actions of companies operating in the continent.
The Peter Munk Cardiac Center and the Peter Munk International Center at the University of Toronto benefit from the generosity of the president of Barrick Gold. Teachers’ pensions, OMERS, Canada Pension Plan, and others all invest in Canadian companies mining in the DRC. Everybody is benefiting! Meanwhile the royalties that these companies pay to the DRC government amount to a mere 5%.
75% of the country’s 60 million inhabitants (around 45 million people) survive on less than a dollar a day. Production costs are very low, there is rampant unemployment, and efforts at organised labour are frequently scuppered. The Banro Corporation controls 13 mining permits in south Kivu, covering concessions that hold approximately 2178 million ounces of gold. Two years ago, Banro claimed to have contributed the welfare of the local population by donating a small kitchen to the local hospital.
CIDA and SNC-Lavalin spent about $2 million on a feasibility study for the construction of the Inga 3 hydroelectric dam. The dam would produce electricity for export, meaning the local residents would have to continue cutting down trees and burning charcoal for cooking, thus further destroying the environment. At the last project meeting held in London, civil society and DRC government representatives were not given a voice. According to Alain Denault, ‘it is worrying to see government agencies like CIDA giving development aid to certain African countries whose resources Canadian companies continue to pillage. CIDA markets Canada while masking the atrocities committed by Canadian companies.’
One wonders why the legal and moral obligations that apply to mining companies in Canada are not applicable in the tropics. It is obvious that the mining companies’ primary objective is profit. But this should not preclude the respect for the engagement conditions of host countries. These companies largely resort to means that would be scarcely acceptable in Canada: rapacious financial practices, human rights violations, violations of ecological standards, stockpiling of undervalued resources. All of these place the future of Africa at risk.
We can echo Alain Denault’s question: ‘What good is served through the shameless extraction of diamonds and gold in Africa, as in Canada, particularly since the profits only accrue to shady companies who continue to threaten the common good?’
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
* Mikhael Missakabo is a science teacher at George Brown Community College in Toronto . He came to Canada from the Democratic Republic of Congo some 20 years ago, and follows developments there very closely.
There are 3 comments on this article.
I request Congo Artisanal Women Miners to take my help in selling rough diamonds to Florida -USA.
Best wishes,
Vijay Sanger
Vijay Sanger - VIJAY SANGER
Thank you for your incisive and illuminating article on Canadian companies in DRC. With the recent news explosion of women and children becoming refugees in DRC in the Eastern region of DRC, I had to ask myself why is the BBC and other media making such a noise about the issue. The British Government then started speaking about possibly sending its troops into the country to help restore law and order.
Now I read your article on the subject about Canadian Mining companies and you have confirmed my views that the problem of DRC and Africa in general is not about exploitation by imperialists and mining companies, our problem is a problem with ourselves and lack of testicular fortitude.
When will we become men and women and stand up in the world and truly take care of ourselves without recourse to external persons, bodies and companies to do for us, that which we have the means and ability to do for ourselves.
Unless we acquire the know-how and begin to apply knowledge to develop our own natural and human resources and then sever the umbilical cord with the West and the East we will remain as slaves to others thereby reaping the destruction of our countries as clearly explained in your article.
We let in these mining companies. Have we no sense? Have we not learnt that the imperialist in Britain is the same as the one in Canada, Australia, Europe and America? When have they ever sought to do us any good without the motivation of getting as much as they can without recourse to morals or any mores?
In truth, we actually deserve what we get in Africa, for going to bed with our ‘open enemies’ whose sole desire is to eliminate us from the Continent of Africa and have her as a play ground. So your article on the modus operandi of Canadian companies is confirmation of what’s been done to Africa since the late 14th Century when the first colonizers began their expeditions into Africa and began setting up ‘Trading Posts’ to exploit and decimate Africa. The difference today is that then, they came in with force and a bible in the other hand, but today we let them in with economic liberalisation policies, political handshakes, Foreign Capital Investments, AID (s) and unpaid IMF, World Bank loans that result in strategic assets being sold off.
Olusola Muhammad, AntiColonial Media
I just can't believe how this things happen in modern world. That Western worlds preach democracy, human rights but do atrocities to other people is hypocrisy. Anyways i also blame those Africans that don't see the interest of their country, region, and people.
How can company own 75% of anything without challenge from anyone? That is is really sad.
Mfalme
WHEN WILL WE START TAKING CARE OF OUR CHIDREN’S FUTURE?
Sunday the 4th of january 2009
Since soon 30 years, I travelled the world and communicated with all kinds of government officials, non governmental instances, resource groups, ethnic communities, journalists of all Medias in the world to inform them about the intense desire of our youth to start some concrete actions to change the course of events.
The governments, the politicians congratulate us; they wish us a long life.
The non governmental instances look at us with indifference and interrogation while keeping their distances and trying to keep their image and satisfy their egos.
Charity organisms express their lack of funding.
Resource groups do not wish to regroup so they would not lose their benefits
All ethnic communities are in favour of supporting any action for our youth.
Almost all journalists ignore our talks and writings stating that they are not there to support or promote any cause or organism that wish to do something good for others. And of course, I am, as a person, an illustrious nobody to their eyes. Also all the letters I sent them throughout all these years are not very sensational news, and sensational is mostly what they are looking for..
Everybody wants to do something, but for most of them it is only good words, but all these good words can not realise anything unless they are accompanied by sustained actions towards the well being of our children. Because these children are, more than their elderly, and more than ever, respectful about the existence of others. They want to take part healthily in the evolution of the world, They do not agree anymore to live under the oxygen tent, they refuse the strait jacket obstinately, they rejects the artificial lung, they will not carry a mask and will not be the scapegoat!
Today extremely fortunately, the majority of the young people of the planet considered themselves as brothers and sisters and inhabitants of the Earth and far from many are those which consider the colors, the cultures, the religions, the beliefs, the languages, the origins as being elements being able to lead to any kind of segregation.
Humanity via its formidable youth progresses and becomes more intelligent, more tolerant and better informed. Our children are not racist and they are eager to act in this field with all their strength, without slackening while being very conscious of the actions necessary to the realization of this realistic and absolutely essential challenge for the changes that this same youth aspires to achieve.
Only a burning and constant desire could be the catalyst element of this extraordinary achievement which is for soon to come, I have inward conviction of it. Without these first steps anything else will not be possible. Because the majority of the problems of this world are closely related to this sad racism phenomenon.
This is why I ask you humbly; to accept to help me in this large and necessary achievement that represent the gathering of international youth to immediately undertake concrete actions which aim at saving the future of our children who, if one continues to have only pious vows, will be terrible for them. Time slips by at full speed and the consequences of our acts only contribute to increase the difficulty for our children, to reverse the current trend which does not lead to nothing good it is certain.
I cannot prevent from thinking of so many leaders of this world who told me personally sentences like: «Why should I care about the youth’s future and the problems they will face, I will be dead."!!!
They are these same leaders who collect millions or even billions of dollars each year in salary and benefits of all kinds on the back of the poor, the low income, the workers and the ordinary citizens of this world. These same ones who stole your belongings, your culture and your future without embarrassment, nor remorse. They are the same people selling you in all full knowledge hazardous substances for health, when they are not simply mortals, that only to make money at all costs. "!!!
It is them which finance the political parties, the despots, the dictators, the terrorists, the civil servants of all the nations, which corrupt the weak or dishonest leaders, justice and the social systems in place.
It is also these same cold people, without heart and pity, which collect money by the left hand to redistribute it with their right hand in all kinds of companies which manufacture conventional weapons, weapons of massive destruction, nuclear weapons, aerospace weapons, anti-missile shields, and shields anti-shields, and which, by the fact even, absorb all the financial resources of the planet in the war, the past, revenge, hatred and death, rather than to invest in peace, the future, forgiveness, love and the life.
It became extremely urgent to link all our forces with an aim of creating a new human moral convention. Let us cease thinking only of ourselves.
I often think of a famous sentence by my preferred French stand-up comic (Coluche) who said this in connection with top selling products: " When I think about the fact that if we were not buying them, it wouldn’t even sell.
Go visit the site of The International Youth Association (Canada XXI) Inc. at the following addresses; www.association-internationale-jeunesse.com and make circulate the information. I exhort you to support me by concrete actions. Let us leave aside the fine words and pass to action. I know with certainty that we are very few to currently draw the engine from a train that the very large majority of the people want to take.
How many of our children will have to die by weapons, before we start thinking that war is horrible? The Memorial Day, celebrated most everywhere throughout the world, always makes me wonder, because it seems to me that one never remembers anything and that one is always ready to start all the possible atrocities and rubbish again and again.
How many of our young people must commit suicide before we find that unacceptable? They do not have any hope anymore! And without hope life is meaningless.
How many thousands of children will have to die of hunger each and every day, in front of our eyes, before we have a real desire to intervene concretely?
I call for Help! In the name of the thousands of young people who informed me of their despair, their fears and of their incapacity to fight against this irrational machine which is the current world geopolitical system.
Allow me to insist and to call on you without stop, until the new era is born.
Michel Bégin, president and founder
The International Youth Association (Canada XXI) Inc. (december 5th 1985)
Sunday the 4th of january 2009
We are an increasing number of people troughout the world creating an international human chain to ask the leaders of this world to proceed actions towards reinstallement of peace in our world.
