From oil to diamonds, offshore prospecting looms over South African fishing city

DORINGBAAI, South Africa — On Sept. 23 and 24, 150 girls within the small fishing city of Doringbaai, on South Africa’s west coast, held an occasion to protest the risk that offshore exploration for oil, gasoline, minerals and even diamonds poses to their livelihoods and marine ecosystems. South Africa’s territorial waters have just lately turn out to be a goal for offshore prospecting.

The Fisherfolk Girls’s Pageant on this city of simply 1,260 individuals, 300 kilometers (186 miles) north of Cape City, ended with a protest march alongside the shoreline. Carrying placards studying “Fingers off our sea and land” and “Shield our ocean life! Maintain the mines out!”, the ladies mentioned their households would starve if the exploration licenses are granted.

Deborah de Wee of the community-based group Doringbaai Fisher Folks Girls was born and raised within the tiny village. She mentioned there are already corporations sifting by way of the sand simply off the coast, trying to find diamonds in small boats with pumps.

“This has brought about a disaster as a result of we’ve discovered that our fish have left the bay. Our fishermen now have to enter the deep sea in the event that they need to catch fish and they don’t have the petrol to get there,” de Wee informed Mongabay by telephone.

Trans-Atlantic Diamonds (Pty.) Ltd. has utilized to prospect throughout greater than 1,240 hectares (3,060 acres) of the seabed simply off the coast of Doringbaai. The firm is trying to find gold, silver, platinum, alluvial diamonds, sapphires and garnets, iron, rare-earth parts, titanium-holding minerals like ilmenite and rutile, and zircon.

The corporate’s socioeconomic evaluation report says there’s a “very low threat” that water high quality shall be degraded by the drilling throughout the two to 5 years it might want to prospect. It additionally says that fisherfolk and their vessels won’t be barred from the prospecting space and that fish and lobster won’t be disturbed.

​Native fisherfolk formally objected to Trans-Atlantic throughout a session assembly held on Nov. 11, 2021. “There isn’t a means that we’re going to let Trans-Atlantic come and mine. We, because the Indigenous individuals right here, know that they won’t cease mining till they’ve stripped our sea as a result of we’re wealthy in sources,” de Wee mentioned. “We’re a really poor neighborhood however we glance out over the ocean — it’s our livelihood, our heartbeat, it’s a part of us. If we don’t cease mining, we’ll starve.”

Unchecked diamond mining drives air pollution of rivers in Zimbabwe’s arid east

MARANGE, Zimbabwe — Diamond mining in Zimbabwe’s Marange area is inflicting elevated siltation and air pollution of the Odzi and Save rivers within the nation’s east. A whole bunch of small-scale farmers who depend on the water from the rivers say they’re struggling to outlive.

Farai Maguwu, director of Zimbabwe’s Centre for Pure Useful resource Governance, which works with communities affected by mining, mentioned unregulated digging on the Marange alluvial diamond fields in Mutare district has brought about giant quantities of soil to clean into the river.

In a telephone interview, Maguwu informed Mongabay that whereas no official details about water use by mines is on the market, residents have seen escalating impacts in current months. “It’s actually so dangerous. In some areas the rivers have disappeared underground due to siltation,” he mentioned.

Marange is an arid space and folks there are closely depending on the rivers’ water. “Communities use river water to irrigate their vegetable plots. Individuals used to fish alongside the river, however now we’ve households which have misplaced entire herds of cattle due to the polluted water that’s discharged into the river.”

The Marange diamond fields had been found in 2006; the following diamond rush noticed an estimated 35,000 individuals flock to Chiadzwa to pan for diamonds or purchase and promote them. In November 2008, the Zimbabwean authorities moved to take management of the diamond fields. In keeping with Human Rights Watch, the Zimbabwean army killed as many as 200 miners and native villagers in a three-month operation.

Since then, there have been intermittent protests by native communities and artisanal miners towards “the looting of diamond income” by state-owned corporations, HRW reviews. Mining is now dominated by the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Firm, a state-owned enterprise, and Anjin, which is collectively owned by the Anhui International Financial Development Group of China and an organization referred to as Matt Bronze, the funding arm of the Zimbabwean military.

The Zimbabwe Environmental Attorneys Affiliation has recorded large-scale environmental injury from the mines within the space, together with “groundwater depletion or air pollution, biodiversity loss, soil contamination, soil erosion, lack of vegetation and mine tailing spills.”

Shell flushed out an oil pipeline in Nigeria in August and nonetheless hasn’t cleaned up

BODO, Nigeria — Residents of a Nigerian neighborhood say an August spill from a pipeline operated by oil large Shell has nonetheless not been cleaned up. Crude oil from the Trans Niger Pipeline, which transports as a lot as 180,000 barrels of crude each day, has lined farmland and contaminated rivers in Bodo neighborhood, close to Port Harcourt, the capital of southeastern Rivers state.

Instantly following the Aug. 3 incident, Shell characterised the spill as being “largely water” combined with about 5 barrels of “residual crude oil” discharged throughout the flushing of the pipeline. It mentioned what leaked constituted 98% water, and that any influence can be “minimal” because the pipeline had not transported crude since mid-June.

“Clear-up of the impacted space and restore work on the pipeline are underneath means,” it mentioned in an announcement. However almost two months later, the cleanup has nonetheless not occurred, locals say.

“The neighborhood persons are saying that Shell was not forthcoming in paying compensation previously, they usually have to finish negotiations this time earlier than permitting them entry to the world,” Eric Dooh, a neighborhood chief, informed Mongabay by telephone.

Getting oil corporations to wash up or pay for environmental crimes in Nigeria could be troublesome, and authorized claims for compensation can take years. Final 12 months, Shell paid a neighborhood $111 million to settle a spill from the Nineteen Seventies.

Bodo is a part of Ogoniland, a flashpoint for oil air pollution in Nigeria. A landmark U.N. report in 2011 held Shell and different multinational oil corporations liable for devastating air pollution within the space and the broader Niger Delta.

A long time of oil manufacturing have taken a toll not solely on fishing and farming communities, however on the area’s wealthy biodiversity, which incorporates threatened species like manatees (Trichechus senegalensis), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti), and the Niger Delta pink colobus (Piliocolobus epieni).

A $1 billion cleanup effort backed by the United Nations Setting Programme has not achieved a lot. Final month, a bunch monitoring the cleanup effort, Stakeholder Democracy Community, mentioned the air pollution in Ogoniland might be worse than beforehand estimated. UNEP says it is going to withdraw from the challenge by the tip of 2022.

Dooh mentioned the most recent spill in Bodo had left farmlands “badly affected” and folks’s well being “in jeopardy.”

Authorities look on as unlawful coltan mining destroys farms in Nigeria

ANGWAN KADE, Nigeria — Residents of a neighborhood 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, say unlawful mining for coltan is destroying their farms and polluting the setting regardless of the complete information of native authorities.

Coltan (brief for columbite-tantalite, the respective sources of niobium and tantalum, that are utilized in digital and biomedical functions) was first present in Angwan Kade a decade in the past. Underneath Nigerian legislation, the federal authorities owns all mineral sources discovered within the nation, and native communities have solely restricted rights to forestall mining.

However in line with authorities information, no licenses have been issued to mine coltan in Angwan Kade, but intensive mining is going down brazenly. Staff utilizing explosives and bulldozers have leveled hills and dug deep pits in quest of ore-bearing rock. Many residents work at varied websites, carrying and crushing rocks or cooking for mine employees.

They’re paid by a shadowy firm referred to as S.B. Olatunji International Nigeria, whose vehicles carry tons of rock to an off-site processing facility daily. Managers at each the mining and processing websites refused to offer contact info for the corporate.

Shehu Akowe, a program assistant on the Well being Of Mom Earth Basis (HOMEF), an environment-focused group, mentioned many mining-affected communities throughout central Nigeria undergo related issues.

“Host communities to extractives and mining corporations in Nigeria are on the mercy of corporations of their communities,” Akowe informed Mongabay. “Land seize in the middle of extractive and mining actions is a factor of pleasure loved by mining corporations in Nigeria.”

Villagers say their lives haven’t been improved by mining, and complain of exploitative work, lack of lands, and air pollution of fields and water sources.

The Nasarawa state governor, Abdullahi Sule, has acknowledged the injury mining is doing, however regardless of promising motion, has allowed it to proceed unchallenged.

The mine leak was dangerous. The DRC and Angola’s response aren’t any higher, report says

Banner picture: A person in a ship in Bodo, Nigeria. A long time of oil manufacturing in Bodo have taken a toll on the fishing and farming communities in addition to the area’s wealthy biodiversity. Picture by Milieudefensie / Akintunde Akinleye by way of Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

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