Stalled Korean Mining Operations Face Fresh Protests

Jan 21, 2010 — The Indi­an government’s grant of the final envi­ron­men­tal clear­ance to a Kore­an giant firm, allow­ing it to acquire 3,000 acres of ‘for­est lands’ in the east­ern state of Oris­sa, has prompt­ed a fresh spate of protests from more than 4,000 fam­i­lies that will be affect­ed by a pro­posed min­ing project.

Pohang Steel Com­pa­ny (POSCO) has been try­ing to set up oper­a­tions in Oris­sa since 2005, which have been stalled since then due to a rash of some­times vio­lent protest move­ments, promi­nent among them being Posco Pratirodh San­gram Sami­ti (PPSS or Com­mit­tee for Resis­tance against POSCO), against the company’s land acqui­si­tions for the project.

The PPSS held its lat­est protest on Jan. 13 after the steel­mak­er obtained the much await­ed clear­ance ear­ly this month. The group is com­posed of local indige­nous or trib­al folk whose com­bined pop­u­la­tion is esti­mat­ed at 22,000.

In June 2005 the state gov­ern­ment and POSCO signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing allow­ing the com­pa­ny to set up a steel plant .

POSCO, which has the largest for­eign direct invest­ment in India so far, at 51,000 crores (11 bil­lion U.S. dol­lars), plans to build a 12-mil­lion-tonne steel plant with a ‘cap­tive’ port in Jagats­ingh­pur dis­trict of Oris­sa, an inte­grat­ed town­ship with water sup­ply infra­struc­ture from two impor­tant bar­rages. The project is expect­ed to gen­er­ate some 45,000 jobs.

India’s gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy on min­ing, cau­tious till 1997, was amend­ed in 2006 to allow full direct invest­ment by for­eign com­pa­nies. It was seen as a means to ‘devel­op­ing’ the coun­try.

Since then, inter­na­tion­al firms like De Beers and Bro­ken Hill Prop­er­ties, both with con­tro­ver­sial human rights and envi­ron­men­tal com­pa­ny prac­tice records in coun­tries like South Africa and Papua New Guinea respec­tive­ly, have acquired huge prospect­ing rights in Oris­sa as well as Mad­hya Pradesh state in cen­tral India.

Along­side China’s demand for iron and steel, fuelled by its furi­ous pace of devel­op­ment , iron ore pro­duc­tion in India jumped from 59 met­ric tonnes in 1993–94 to 154 mil­lion tonnes (mt) in 2005-06, baux­ite from 5 mt to 12 mt in the same peri­od, while coal-pro­duc­tion increased from 267 mt to 437 mt.

Yet, this huge spi­ral­ing pro­duc­tion has con­tributed a mere 2.5 per­cent to the country’s gross domes­tic prod­uct in the last 10 years and yield­ed much small­er rev­enues for the gov­ern­ment than it should have, giv­en its panoram­ic increase, accord­ing to the Cen­tre for Sci­ence and Envi­ron­ment, a well respect­ed New Del­hi-based organ­i­sa­tion that is cam­paign­ing against exploita­tive min­ing.

The Oris­sa state government’s no-holds-barred entry to POSCO gives the com­pa­ny 600 mt of iron ore at half its mar­ket price, enabling it to make sig­nif­i­cant­ly hand­some prof­its. This was based on a study con­duct­ed by envi­ron­men­tal researcher and social activist Man­shi Ash­er of the Nation­al Cen­tre for Advo­ca­cy Stud­ies (NCAS), based in Pune dis­trict in Maha­rash­tra, locat­ed on the west­ern coast of India.

The gov­ern­ment, which also gives the com­pa­ny tax-free sta­tus and incen­tives, will sup­ply iron ore to POSCO at a dis­count of 2,000 rupees (approx­i­mate­ly 44 U.S. dol­lars) per tonne, and allow it to export high-qual­i­ty ore even while it imports low-alu­mi­na con­tent ore.

Brazil and Chi­na had ear­li­er turned down POSCO’s pro­posed deals due to the company’s refusal to buy iron ore at mar­ket prices. The com­pa­ny is now fac­ing protests in Uruguay over land acqui­si­tion for a car­bon seques­tra­tion project.

In Oris­sa, the com­pa­ny will also receive approx­i­mate­ly 150,000 mil­lion litres of water, affect­ing water sup­ply to the near­est city of Cut­tack and irri­ga­tion to four dis­tricts. It will like­wise get an unspec­i­fied num­ber of ‘cap­tive’ coal mines and over 6,000 acres of land (com­pris­ing the new­ly cleared for­est areas for the Kore­an firm), exclud­ing an unspec­i­fied acreage for estab­lish­ing trans­porta­tion, water and ‘any oth­er project-relat­ed infra­struc­ture facil­i­ties’, as per its agree­ment, accord­ing to Ash­er.

Offi­cial sta­tis­tics indi­cate that mere­ly 438 acres of the land involved is pri­vate, dis­plac­ing 471 fam­i­lies. Gov­ern­ment records, how­ev­er, do not reflect that most of the approx­i­mate­ly 3,000 acres of land belong­ing to the for­est depart­ment have been under cul­ti­va­tion for gen­er­a­tions, or used by com­mu­ni­ties for fod­der and non-tim­bre for­est pro­duce.

Repeat­ed calls by IPS to K.C. Sahu, who is in charge of min­ing oper­a­tions in POSCO’s Indi­an arm at Bhubanesh­war, drew no response.

There are also envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns over defor­esta­tion, destruc­tion of coastal and estu­ar­ine ecosys­tems includ­ing the destruc­tion of a nat­ur­al drainage sys­tem by the con­struc­tion of a cap­tive port.

The Garhir­matha tur­tle sanc­tu­ary in Oris­sa, home to hun­dreds of nest­ing Olive Rid­ley tur­tles every year, faces sig­nif­i­cant risk by the con­struc­tion of POSCO’s cap­tive port.

The PPSS is also wor­ried about the port affect­ing the liveli­hoods of near­ly 30,000 fish­er­folk.

“There are man­groves where the port is planned, and salt mounds that serve to stop sea­wa­ter flow­ing in,” says Prashant Paikare, spokesper­son of PPSS. ” What about nat­ur­al dis­as­ters because of their destruc­tion ?” he asks.

In 1999, a dev­as­tat­ing cyclone killed thou­sands and dis­placed as many on this coast­line, destroy­ing 275,000 homes.

Con­cerns about health also hound the project. Accord­ing to the NCAS study, the local trib­al pop­u­la­tion also faces seri­ous health prob­lems, espe­cial­ly among mine work­ers in the region. Many oth­ers, hav­ing lost their lands and forests, appear to have migrat­ed, with their where­abouts unknown.

“We will offer mass resis­tance,” warns Paikare. “We still don’t believe the reha­bil­i­ta­tion pack­age that the gov­ern­ment has said POSCO must ful­fill will take care of all the issues involved.”

POSCO has yet to announce the com­po­nents of the pack­age, but locals news reports said the com­pa­ny was will­ing to offer land to those who would be dis­placed by its project. No oth­er details were giv­en, how­ev­er.

Soon after the PPSS’s Jan. 13 protest, the gov­ern­ment of Oris­sa announced it was con­ven­ing a reha­bil­i­ta­tion and periph­ery devel­op­ment advi­so­ry com­mit­tee. Steel and mines state sec­re­tary A.M.R. Dal­wai said he would now focus on the reha­bil­i­ta­tion pack­age.

The Indi­an government’s envi­ron­men­tal approval to POSCO comes with 15 rid­ers, includ­ing com­pul­so­ry afforesta­tion; that lands remain with the gov­ern­ment and that no dam­age be caused to flo­ra and fau­na. It also spec­i­fies that the project can­not be under­tak­en with­out the con­sent of the trib­al com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing in the area.

The pro­posed min­ing site in Keon­jhar dis­trict, which will sup­ply POSCO its iron ore, is already reel­ing under the neg­a­tive effects of large-scale min­ing activ­i­ty.

Pro­tect­ed against land alien­ation under India’s con­sti­tu­tion because of its being a trib­al area, Keon­jhar still faces con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions by even state-run organ­i­sa­tions like the Oris­sa Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, tak­en to court for land ille­gal­i­ties.

“We can­not have devel­op­ment which is only about extrac­tion,” says activist Rose­mary Vish­wanath, believ­ing it impov­er­ish­es the affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties and destroys their cul­ture.