Discuss briefly the economic and social justice issues that can arise from some mining operations

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

We live in a global and interdependent economic system. Materials for manufacturing can easily be drawn from several continents before the item in question (for example, cellular telephones) comes off the conveyor belt. With costs of extraction, processing, transportation, refining, marketing, and finally assembly of product, international corporations are constantly looking for ways to keep costs low and make their product competitive. That said, often the nations or domestic regions that actually extract minerals are not given the humane and environmental consideration they deserve. Furthermore, when minerals are extracted from areas which are in the process of civil war or have weak central governments, workers may be mercilessly exploited and the in-region profits co-opted by militias, government officials, or war lords. The result of these mining operations can be the direct financing of war, slavery, ethnic strife, and the economic disenfranchisement of the field workers, most of whom are desperately poor. This has been the case of petroleum extraction in Nigeria, coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and diamond mining in Sierra Leone. Even in the United States, the plight of people living in the Appalachians under control of large coal-mining corporations have suffered elements of this misery from the results of mountaintop removal mining techniques. Hope may dawn on this grim scene as public awareness and outrage at these events is prompting action by several developed nations as well as the United Nations.