IFC and Gold Mining in Guatemala and Ghana

New York Times
Oct 24, 2005

Behind gold's glitter: Torn lands and pointed questions
By Jane Perlez and Kirk Johnson The New York Times
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2005

There has always been an element of madness to gold's allure.

For thousands of years, something in the eternally lustrous metal has driven people to the outer edges of desire - to have it and hoard it, to kill or conquer for it, to possess it like a lover.

In the early 1500's, King Ferdinand of Spain laid down the priorities as his conquistadors set out for the New World. "Get gold," he told them, "Humanely if possible, but at all costs, get gold."

In that long and tortuous history, gold has now arrived at a new moment of opportunity and peril.

The price of gold is higher than it has been in 17 years - pushing $500 an ounce. But much of the gold left to be mined is microscopic and is being wrung from the earth at enormous environmental cost, often in some of the poorest corners of the world.

...

Profit and Poverty

Today gold companies are striking out to remote corners of the globe led by a powerful guide: the World Bank.

The bank, the pre-eminent institution for alleviating world poverty, has argued that multinational mining companies would bring investment, as well as roads, schools and jobs, to countries with little else to offer than their natural resources. For the bank, which tries to draw private investment to underdeveloped lands, the logic was simple.

"We invest to help reduce poverty and help improve people's lives," said Rashad-Rudolf Kaldany, head of oil, gas and mining at the bank's profit-making arm, the International Finance Corporation.

The bank has worked both ends of the equation. At its urging, more than 100 cash-strapped governments have agreed to cut taxes and royalties to lure big mining companies, said James Otto, an adjunct professor at the University of Denver law school.

At the same time, the bank put up money for or insured more than 30 gold-mining projects, looking for profits.

Though mining was a small part of the bank's portfolio, it was not without controversy as accidents mounted. In one of the worst disasters, in 1995, a mine in Guyana insured by the bank spilled more than 790,000 gallons of cyanide-laced mine waste into a tributary of the Essequibo River, the country's main water source.

By 2001, the World Bank president, James D. Wolfensohn, imposed a two-year moratorium on mining investments and ordered a review of its involvement in the industry.

Emil Salim, a former minister of environment of Indonesia, led the study. "I said, up to now the International Finance Corporation was only listening to business," he said in an interview in Jakarta. "I said, so now let's give some voice to civil society."

Mr. Salim recommended reducing the use of cyanide, banning the disposal of waste in rivers and oceans, and giving communities veto power over mining company plans.

But the industry complained. And developing country governments said they liked the bank's loans to gold mines. In the end, the bank settled on more modest goals.

It pledged to make environmental impact statements understandable to villagers and to back only projects with broad community support. It also urged governments to spend mining companies' taxes and royalties in the communities near the mines.

But critics and environmental groups say the bank demands little from the mining companies in return for its money and its seal of approval.

The bank's guidelines for arsenic in drinking water are less stringent than those of the World Health Organization, and mercury contamination levels are more lenient than those permitted by the E.P.A., said Andrea Durbin, a consultant to nongovernmental groups pressing for tougher standards.

The International Finance Corporation is drafting new guidelines that will clarify what it expects from miners, said Rachel Kyte, its director of environment and social development.

But the draft rules give mining companies even more latitude, said Manish Bapna, the executive director of the Bank Information Center, a group that monitors the bank. They will make it easier for companies to evict indigenous people and to mine in some of the globe's most treasured habitats, he said.

Despite the World Bank's two-year review, little has changed, said Robert Goodland, a former director of environment at the bank who was an adviser on the study. "The bank insists on business as usual," he said.

Resistance in Guatemala

The first piece of new mining business the bank invested in after its review can be found today in the humid, green hills of western Guatemala.

Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini, a big burly man who mixes politics and religion with ease, doesn't understand why the World Bank lent $45 million to a rich multinational company for a gold mine in his impoverished region of Mayan farmers.

"Why not spend the money directly to help the people?" he asked.

Sprawled across a deep wooded valley, a new mine built by Glamis Gold, a Canadian company, was chosen by the World Bank last year as a new model for how gold mining could help poor people.

But the mine has faced protest at every turn.

At the June 2004 board meeting of the International Finance Corporation, there was considerable skepticism about its $45 million loan to Glamis.

Members questioned why a $261 million project was creating only 160 long-term jobs and giving money to a "well capitalized" company like Glamis at all, according to minutes of the meeting provided to The Times by a nongovernmental group opposed to the project.

Others were worried that the I.F.C. was relying too heavily on information from Glamis about the potential for pollution.

The World Bank had pledged to back only mines with broad local support. But on the ground in Guatemala, opposition boiled over last December.

Angry farmers set up a roadblock to stop trailers carrying huge grinding machines for the mine. After 40 days, and battles between police and protesters, the equipment had to be escorted by soldiers.

To persuade the villagers of the mine's benefits, Glamis flew 19 planeloads of farmers to a mine it runs in Honduras.

But the villagers of Sipicapa still wanted their voices heard. On a cool Saturday morning in June, more than 2,600 men and women dressed in their weekend best, with children in tow, crowded into the community's yards, churches and verandas to vote in a nonbinding referendum.

"We are already regretting that our forefathers allowed the Spaniards to buy our land for trinkets and mirrors," said Fructuoso López Pérez, a local mayor. "So we should vote so our children will thank us for doing right."

At that, a church full of local people raised their hands in a unanimous show of opposition to the mine.

Much of the peasants' fury was informed by Robert E. Moran, an American hydrogeologist, who was asked by Madre Selva, a Guatemalan nongovernmental organization, to visit the mine and review its environmental impact statement.

Mr. Moran, who was on the advisory board of the bank's mining study, found it badly lacking. It did not address the "very large quantities of water" the mine would use, or give basic information on the "massive volumes" of waste the mine would produce, he said.

Tim Miller, vice president of Central American operations for Glamis, said the environmental impact statement had been a "working document."

In Guatemala City, the Vice Minister of Mining, Jorge Antonio García Chiu, defended approval of the mine, saying it followed four months of consultation.

Mr. Kaldany, the I.F.C. official, said the investment and the environmental impact statement were both sound. "We are a bank," he said. "We go on the basis of a business development project. Then, as well, the bank asks: Are we needed? Are we adding any value?"

Glamis had already spent $1.3 million on social programs in the villages as part of the bank's requirements, Mr. Kaldany said.

At the mine, the grinding and churning of new machinery being tested already echoes across the valley. Production could begin as early as November.

Mr. Miller, of Glamis, said the mine was a winner for the people, and his company. In fact, he said, Glamis didn't need the bank, the bank came to Glamis.

Bank officials "were anxious to make some investments" in the region, he said. The company is expecting to gross $1 billion over the life of the mine, with profits of $200 to $300 million.

"That's a return of about 25 to 30 percent," he said.

Ghana: The Social Costs

The men of Binsre on Ghana's ancient Gold Coast carry on their own hunt for gold. Nearly naked, their arms and legs slathered in gray ooze, they sift through the muck in a large pit, using buckets and hard hats, looking for any last scrap.

So far industrial mining has not lived up to its promise for these men and their families. They are illegal miners who find work not inside the highly mechanized mines of Ghana's first-world investors, but on the fringes, scavenging the waste left behind by AngloGold Ashanti, the world's second-largest gold company, based in South Africa.

Six miners have died in the last several years, most of them overcome by fumes when waste from the mine gushed into the pit, said Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, an advocate for the illegal miners. The mine tried to keep the men out.

"We used to use dogs," said AngloGold Ashanti's chief financial officer, Kwaku Akosah-Bempah. "Then they said we were using dogs to bite them." So the mine stopped using the dogs and the men returned.

In the nearby village of Sanso, a few men said they had lost their land to the mine. Now they carve shafts into a mountain of waste rock, where they haul, hammer, chip and sift.

"You wake up one day and you realize your farm is destroyed," said Assemblyman Benjamin Annan, a local politician. "They say they will compensate but it takes one or two years. So people are compelled to go to illegal mining, the way our ancestors did."

Industrial-size shaft mining has existed in Ghana for 100 years, but with the price of gold soaring, more companies are arriving now, this time bringing open-pit cyanide mines. The investment has been greeted warmly by the government.

Newmont is set to spend a billion dollars on a new mine next year and on a second mine - in one of the badly deforested country's last remaining forest preserves - in 2007.

The World Bank is here, too, preparing to lend the company $75 million. Together, the bank and Newmont say, they aim to show how social development and gold mining can be married.

Newmont compensated the farmers who were moved off their land. It is offering training for new jobs, like growing edible snails and making soap. It built new concrete and tin-roofed houses to replace homes made of mud.

But the mine will create just 450 full-time jobs. More than 8,000 people will be displaced.

"The house is O.K.," said Gyinabu Ali, 35, a divorced mother of five children, who recently moved into her gaily painted two-room house, with a toilet out back, that overlooks several dozen similar units resembling a poor man's Levittown. "I miss my land where I could grow my own food."

Near the mine of Newmont's competitor, AngloGold Ashanti, in Obuasi, only half of the homes have an indoor bathroom, and 20 percent have running water. With the exception of the brick villas of the company executives, Obuasi today looks like a vast and squalid shanty town.

The chief financial officer, Mr. Akosah-Bempah, said he was offended by the poor conditions. Most of the company's taxes and royalties had stayed in the capital, he said, leaving the ramshackle town bereft of the benefits of gold mining.

"Sometimes we feel embarrassed by going to Obuasi," he said. "Not enough has gone back into the community."

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