Four environmental civil society organisations (CSOs) have sent a strong signal to all mining companies bidding for bauxite mining in the Atewa Forest that the prospect of bauxite mining in the legally protected forest is highly contested.
The intention is to warn mining companies to be mindful of the damage that mining activities will cause to the Atewa Forest.
The organisations – Friends of the Earth-Ghana, A Rocha Ghana, the Concerned Citizens of Atewa Landscape and the Green Livelihoods Alliance – in a statement signed by Dr Theo Anderson, Director, Friends of the Earth Ghana, and Mr Nehemiah Tettey Odjer-Bio, Project Co-ordinator for GLA at FoE-Ghana, also warned mining companies to be mindful of the dissent and the damage that mining activities will cause to the Atewa Forest.
They warned that “the prospect of bauxite mining in this legally protected forest is highly contested by local communities, national civil society organisations and international conservation organisations”.
The CSOs expressed their disappointment at the “serious lack of transparency such that civil society and local communities have not been included in this process, especially with regards to the Atewa Forest”.
The notice warned companies bidding for concessions in the Atewa Forest that the forest is currently a highly contested site due to the significant and growing threat of bauxite mining. As such, any mining company that has already made or is considering making a bid for a concession there should be mindful that the campaign to protect Atewa Forest from bauxite mining is gaining momentum.
It also warned that the Atewa communities’ deeply held dissent will not go away, as it has socio-cultural significance for the communities as it contains their Sacred Groves, used for fetish rituals, and the burial sites of chiefs and community members, which ensures their spirits remain connected to the forest, with their aversion to the government’s agreement to allow bauxite mining in the forest being expressed through many peaceful actions.
The notice also warned the prospective bidders that the Atewa Forest is one of the world’s Key Biodiversity Areas harbouring over 100 rare and endangered wildlife species, of which many will be threatened with extinction if the forest is mined for bauxite. The statement also warned that the forest also provides critical ecosystem and life support services such as potable water for five million people, clean air, and climate change mitigation and resilience. Due to its local, national and global significance, the Atewa Range Forest Reserve is protected from mining and other damaging developments by Ghana’s 1927 Forest Act (CAP 157).
To this end, the forest is supported and promoted within Ghana and across the world by national and international civil society and conservation organisations like A Rocha Ghana, the Green Livelihoods Alliance, Friends of the Earth Ghana, World Wildlife Fund for Nature, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Birdlife International, and Global Wildlife Conservation.
The statement also cast down on the Government of Ghana’s promise that mining activities in the Atewa Forest will not be close to water sources and will in no way affect any watersheds or rivers, since the forest is the source of three major rivers which provide drinking water to local communities and five million people in the Greater Accra Region.
It stated, “It will not be possible to mine Atewa Forest without affecting these critical water sources. Even if mining is kept away from the rivers’ headwaters, as the government intends, the mining will cause heavy metals to leach from the disturbed soils, which will then be washed into the water sources, polluting them with dangerous heavy metals.”
It warned of serious health implications should members of local communities ingest these heavy metals as they cannot be cleared from the water by merely boiling.
The CSOs also said that as far as they are aware, “no technology exists for mining bauxite in a way that does not disturb the forest or wildlife or damage the quality of life of communities dependent on the forest’s resources,” clearly debunking government’s insistent assertions that it will only allow responsible, sustainable and ‘environmentally friendly mining practices’ to be employed in mining so as not to damage the forest, biodiversity or ecological services the forest provides.
It also reminded prospective bidders of provisions contained in the ‘Sustainable Bauxite Mining Guidelines’ developed by the International Aluminium Institute, which lists as one of the measures for the ‘mitigation of biodiversity impacts,’ ‘Avoiding designated protected areas’.
The statement concluded by rehashing the CSOs’ position that the Atewa Forest is a designated protected forest reserve, and mining it would not fulfil the government’s promise of mining Ghana’s bauxite in a responsible sustainable way.
Source: The Finder
