Rio Tinto's Madagascar Mine to Go Ahead

Friends of the Earth said it was extremely disappointed by Rio Tinto's decision, announced today (Wednesday), to go ahead with an titanium dioxide mine on the island of Madagascar. Campaigners objected to the mine which will damage the unique biodiversity of the island and do little to benefit local people.

Today's announcement gave approval for development of the mine near Fort Dauphin on the south-east coast of Madagascar, with production expected to start in 2008. The project, managed by a Rio Tinto subsidiary QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM), would involve removing coastal forest to extract titanium dioxide, a mineral used to produce white pigment for paints, plastics and paper.

The decision comes 10 years after Friends of the Earth's then Campaigns Director, Andrew Lees, died while investigating proposals for the controversial mine. Andrew was found in the forest having collapsed and died from heat stroke.

Madagascar has a unique and rich variety of flora and fauna - of its estimated 200,000 plant and animal species, three quarters exist nowhere else in the world. Friends of the Earth is concerned by the impact on biodiversity - as well as its impact on freshwater resources, and tourism.

Friends of the Earth Executive Director Tony Juniper said:

"This is a very sad day and very bad news for the people of Madagascar. This mine will not solve the terrible problems of poverty on the island, but will damage its precious biodiversity. Rio Tinto is exploiting natural resources in the developing world and once again, it is the local people who will pay the price. It is time international laws were introduced to protect the interests of people and the environment. It is clear that companies cannot be trusted to do so.

The Government of Madagascar has agreed to contribute US$35 million to the establishment of the port, as part of its Growth Poles Project funded by the World Bank.



Press releases delivered direct to your inbox

Your email address:

News by RSS?

Contact details:

Friends of the Earth
26-28 Underwood St.
LONDON
N1 7JQ

Tel: 020 7490 1555
Fax: 020 7490 0881
Email: info@foe.co.uk
Website: www.foe.co.uk

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IMF Executive Board Discusses the First Assessment of Eligible Countries under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

On December 21, 2005 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established the list of countries that qualify for debt relief from the Fund under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Debt relief delivery, which could start as soon as January 3, 2005, is now conditional on getting the consents of all the contributors to the Subsidy Account of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) Trust, whose contributions help finance the Initiative. The MDRI will deliver debt relief from the Fund to qualifying members countries with an annual per capita income at or below US$380, and to countries above the threshold that have reached the completion point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The implementation of the MDRI will reduce the external debt burden of a number of the world's poorest countries and will provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Background The Executive Board appro...
Read more

Oil’s chaotic collapse deepens; stocks drop worldwide

Image
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices crumpled even further Tuesday, and U.S. stocks sank to their worst loss in weeks as worries swept markets worldwide about the economic carnage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The market’s spotlight was again on oil, where prices have plummeted because very few people are flying or driving, and factories have shut amid widespread stay-at-home orders. Global demand is set to drop to levels last seen in the mid 1990s. At the same time, oil producers can’t slow their production fast enough, and all the extra crude means storage tanks are quickly running out of room. The cost for a barrel of U.S. oil to be delivered in June plunged 43% to $11.57. That’s the part of the market that oil traders are focused on and trading most actively. For oil to be delivered next month, which is when storage tanks could top out, the cost of a barrel stood at $10.01. A day earlier, it fell below zero for the first time, meaning traders paid others to take oil off their hand...
Read more

Mapping Extreme Poverty Around the World A new report from the

Image
A new report from the  World Bank  just landed, finding that a record low of 10% of humanity now live in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2013. But poverty rates aren’t anywhere close to equal between continents or even countries, as our new series of maps clearly demonstrates. The World Bank provides an in-depth explanation for its methodology, which you can find in Appendix A of the full report  here . We focused on the percentage of people in each country living below what the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, or $1.90/day. We’ll let the researchers defend this definition on their own, but there is one caveat to keep in mind. It can be extraordinarily difficult to collect reliable data from so many countries on a regular basis, and in fact we used the latest year in which numbers were available whenever possible. For example, in some of these maps we compare 2011 figures against 2015. In short, our maps provide the clearest possible apples-to-apples compa...
Read more