El Salvador bans metal mining in world first
phys.org
phys.org
Does anyone know what sort of impact this will have on their economy?
[0]https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/mar/30/e...
Pretty much zero. I live in El Salvador. The economy is fucked up since long time ago, and metal mining was unlikely to help in any way, specially when most of the profit derived from it was going to leave the country, and the percentage that would remain here was going to end up in the hands of corrupt government officials, in the form of bribes or funding for lobbying.
That being said, I'd expect this will lead to a surge in illegal mining operations, which will likely be a lot more environmentally hazardous.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/magazine/sand-mining-indi...
The argument by itself is not moot, and the writer did not explicitly support an agenda.
That the comment doesn't suggest action is the form of defeatism I was refering to. Defeatists don't normally call for inaction they just present all the problems that action leads to promote inaction.
> Defeatists don't normally call for inaction they just present all the problems that action leads to promote inaction.
Suppose someone called for prohibition again as an action to reduce the incidence of alcohol-related car accidents and domestic abuse.
You have the information that this leads to a lot of money flowing into the hands of criminals. How is stating that defeatism?
you don't do mining for fun, nor does anyone get the urge to suddenly mine something. outlawing alcohol was/is pretty useless because pretty much everyone and their mother wants to drink some alcohol every so often.
You're conflating a simple statement that presents factual information to a mindset.
One in fact can use that information to try influencing people to be scared™. However that is not always the case, and people can for example offer an alternative.
The case in point is not that I agree or not with the passing of the law, but that passing it may have unintended consequences, so that you need to account for that.
The analogy was intended to be used as a context for a debate against decision makers using factual data, the fact that it's mining or liquor does not make difference. It was devised to counter-attack your understanding that just by warning of something bad if you do something else you're being defeatist.
> Some people might see it as sort of a defeatist stance to take. Is it harder to detect illegal mine or to regulate all mining?
Since you're assuming something implicit in our discussion maybe you can answer the question yourself.
I'm not trying to make implicit assumptions, that question was rhetorical and answered in the next sentence.
Ok, so I'll guess you are assuming it is easy to detect and punish irregular mining then.
I agree and understand your point as how the increased propensity for illegal mining can be combated.
I think it was not exactly cynical, and that's coming from someone who supports El Salvador's action. We need clarification of all possible issues to understand how to act on them, but I guess at this point it's a difference on how each one of us took the statement.
That was a good discussion though.
You don't solve these problems as easily. To really fix it, a way to produce minerals in economically safe and preferably, sustainable way (like, filtering out of ocean water) is needed.
Does "proper mining" somehow police against illegal mining?
A problem for most developing countries, especially when the company is backed by a much more powerful country.
Compare that to small scale illegal miners. The scale at which they can pollute is a lot less and localised. Yes they damage, but do not have the potential to damage as the large corporations.
Ideally, legal mining / oil extraction would be heavily regulated and monitored to avoid (minimise) contamination.
But in remote areas of developing countries, the profit at stake is too corrupting to "both" sides. It is all too easy to see the developing country as being the corrupt partner (which it is) but many forget the corruption of the powerful side who set up the corruption in the first place. A chicken and egg situation. Was the country corrupted before, or was it made corrupt by the offer of money to chase bigger profit
I wonder how close we are to that future.
Gold is an obvious target, but there are probably larger quantities of other valuable metals to be had from recently accumulated trash.
The anarcho capitalist solution is that the country should privatize their water supply so that outside companies can then legally buy up the lakes and pollute as much as they want! After all the companies will have paid people for it - the people only would have to live there :)
That's roughly what has been happening in several other Latin American countries. Bechtel being the usual suspect, they specialize at that kind of trick hand-in-hand with the World Bank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War
"The World Bank said that "poor governments are often too plagued by local corruption and too ill equipped to, the World Bank stated that "no subsidies should be given to ameliorate the increase in water tariffs in Cochabamba". The New Yorker reported on the World Bank's motives, "Most of the poorest neighborhoods were not hooked up to the network, so state subsidies to the water utility went mainly to industries and middle-class neighborhoods; the poor paid far more for water of dubious purity from trucks and handcarts. In the World Bank's view, it was a city that was crying out for water privatization."
That sounds eerily like your comment.
And before you start saying I should take off my tin foil hat, look up the 1973 coupe in Chile, the Iranian Contras, United Fruit and the documentary Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
I hope El Salvador keeps mining banned. I really do. But the track record is that NATO countries tend to "fix" things when their interests are threatened.
I guess it's possible that the U.S. doesn't care about the backlash, but it wouldn't be a popular move.
Those were "their" sons of bitches.
What about Russia, China, Japan... even South Africa? I think one of them might have been involved in a coup, over through, or invasion in the last 40 years.
At least the sheep shippers of Togo are doing their part to subvert surveillance...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/russi...
In the mean time, half of South America had pretty leftist governments and nothing happened.
Leftists got better at "not being scary" to foreign and most importantly local interests. And for the most part, they delivered.
Basically the José Figueres Ferrer way.
Bolsa Familia surely lacks the romantism of the comprehensive agrarian reform but I like the fact that it has actually been done.
And it was for that reason the US left their governments unmolested?
I'm not sure I understand your second point.
Context matters. With the end of the cold war, the oligarchy doesn't get to use a threat to gather support. And a certain level of diversification of those economies have made the very powerful less power.
My second point is that half of South America had left wing government and there was no Coups. Things would have been very different for Lula or Correa in the 70's.
Coup attempt in Venezuala where Chavez was kidnapped and fly out of the country until the people came onto the streets. CIA implicated [1] [2]
Coup attempt in Ecuador a few years back Correa held [3]. Although am not aware of any covert involvement or evidence to imply. However, as is often the case with these Latin America issues, accusations are always laid at the US doorstop. But Correa did make the US leave their Manta based army base, did make anti US noise, did get close to Chavez and Ecuador is an oil producing country so it wouldn't be completely unreasonable to think so involvement based on past behaviour of the US..
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_(documentary) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ecuador_crisis
In Venezuela, it looks like slightly less than that was enough.
So if he was slated to die in a plane crash, I feel like it would have happened back in 1984.
Blocking access to a resource would redirect efforts towards other activities.
Countries with abundance of resources or no restrictions to harvest them are not always more prosperous, as explained by the concept "resource course": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
So, the solution is simple: mine asteroids. No one cares about pollution in space.
> But mining accounts for a minimal portion of their economies and jobs, a recent study by various NGOs showed.
Which of course is great when you're sitting in your NGO provided air-conditioned office. But a few tens of thousands of miners might disagree with the definition of 'minimal'. For them it likely was all of their income.
I'm all for change like this but I would prefer a more gradual approach. Such as 'no new people are allowed to be hired for mining' or other more or less automatic mechanisms.
Upon some research, seems like even the catholic church was in favour [1], which is what gave it the final push. I doubt this will cause problems to the level of starting riots; rioting against the government is one thing, but having your church and larger community against your cause definitely makes it lose momentum.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-39451498
Colonialism is far from over, it just wears a corporate suit these days.
It's going to happen again when people realize that making Snapchat one of the most valuable stocks will torpedo the whole market and will make Pets.com look like someone spilled their drink.
[1](I am American and can clearly see that we are the ones who should shoulder this blame, and under Trump the lower half will in one way or another)
Christ, there really is no justice with these corps.
That I totally believe. But the miners are not so stupid that they would not be doing day labor or growing corn if it compensated them in the same way.
Is the job I'm offering you a net gain for your community? It's certainly a net gain to you, and me...
Stories on El Salvador's mining ban emphasize gold mining. I'm not sure what gems are found in coincidence with gold, except maybe quartz crystals in hydrothermal gold deposits.
Silver, copper, lead, zinc and titanium seem to be the other metals mined in El Salvador. Although there are collectable minerals associated with some of these (copper->azurite, malachite; lead->galena crystals), I can't immediately think of gemstones that occur in these metallic ores.
Including your computer?
Why not just ban science?
We need metals to live and prosper.
If it was really that minimal as per 'NGO' advise then the pollution would be minimal.
Why not just make companies pay fines if they polute? The government obviously doesn't kowtow to them?
Perhaps if their people weren't so poor you could excuse banning things like gold and diamond. But this (as the article tells it, I doubt it's close to the full story) is like going back to the middle ages.
We're justly concerned about this but but on the other hand Americans are told that mercury amalgam is perfectly safe when permanently lodged a few centimeters from the brain.
American Dental Association: "Dental amalgam is considered a safe, affordable and durable material that has been used to restore the teeth of more than 100 million Americans. It contains a mixture of metals such as silver, copper and tin, in addition to mercury, which binds these components into a hard, stable and safe substance. Dental amalgam has been studied and reviewed extensively, and has established a record of safety and effectiveness.".
So, are Denmark, Sweden and Norway ill-informed for banning it for medical and environmental reasons? My biochemistry tells me they're not.
https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Adviso...e/DentalProductsPanel...
El Salvador is a small country with no pretenses of being self-sufficient. It doesn't matter how silly the local laws are.
Even big countries may lack some rare metals or fossil fuels.
Could you develop this point? Certainly not rocket science [0].
Not even human experimentation, which the US carried out until the 70s, at least. Using poor people, prisoners, etc.
I suggest that you visit or at least read about El Salvador or Guatemala. No insult intended, but your attitude is both ignorant and offensive.
Prosper maybe, but not live. You seem to simultaneously admit to knowing nothing about El Salvador or the "full story" yet regardless you have formed very strong opinions about how the citizens of El Salvador should be extracting resources for you and the rest of the world.
That's because most of the money leaves the country.
Rather than banning mining outright, they need to implement environmental controls to address the actual problem: Not metal extraction, but pollution.
P.S. nobody seemed to give a shit for the years that mining interests have been poisoning local populations for profit across the globe. One side effect of this extreme measure will be more publicity for the issue of dirty mining in the developing world. And consequently perhaps a move toward mining companies being better actors due to increased pressure from governments and to avoid bad PR. And if that happens then El Salvador would be able to see it, begin to trust mining companies again, and maybe allow them back in. Until that happens though there's little advantage to them of continuing the status quo.