Lance Neita | Bauxite industry: The way to consensus

The ongoing appeal against an injunction blocking bauxite mining in an area covered by a 25-year Special Mining lease is being watched carefully by stakeholders in the industry, including the Government, employees, retirees, and community interested parties.

The injunction, and the trail of events that have led to this unprecedented offensive mounted over several years against a leading industry in Jamaica, has raised concerns of a massive fallout in the economy were the cessation of mining to lead to an exit path for the bauxite/alumina sector.

The bauxite industry has a 70-year history of selfless community and national partnerships.

The history documents numerous instances of mutual support and alliance with its host communities and with the Government from colonial days of the 1950s, through the Independence years, and in to the present decade of contribution to growth and development during extraordinary and challenging times.

Safeguarding the environment around the act of bauxite mining and refining is no easy task, but it is a fact that the companies continually upgrade their traditional responsible mining practices that include environment protection and responsibility through major dust-control mechanisms, safety programmes extended into schools and communities, a wide range of compensation levels where due and justified, communication via a network of community councils across the industry, and practical demonstrations of care and respect as part of their mode.

The new environmentalists of the modern era have quite correctly pinpointed the shortcomings and imperfections of the system especially where they say people’s health is affected.

EXTREMIST LANGUAGE

Unfortunately, they have consistently resorted to extremist language to make their point. The industry has been caricatured as ‘raping sections of the Cockpit Country” (there is no mining in the Cockpit Country), ‘degrading the country’, ‘disruptive and painful’, ‘incalculable environmental abuse’, and ‘hurting social life and environment with very little economic benefit’.

Employees, their families, retirees, and community residents don’t take kindly to such language or aspersions. It is inconceivable that an industry with such a history of invaluable contribution to Jamaica’s economic and social development should be so tarnished and insulted.

At least the former chairman of the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), Diana McCauley, was straightforward enough to tell us that while conducting the research for their flagship publication Red Dirt, “many who spoke to JET benefited from bauxite mining through direct or indirect employment. They did not want the industry to close, but they wanted their rural livelihoods to continue and not have their health or the health of their children compromised”.

More ironic is the fact that aluminium is at the heart of the very industry that the environmentalists are trying to desecrate.

LIGHT, STRONG, AND BEAUTIFUL

Aluminium is the world’s most abundant metallic element in the earth’s crust.

Every one of us, including the environmentalist, uses aluminium daily. It is in the phone you use, the car you drive, the can you drink from, the toothpaste you brush with, and the cooking pans on your stove.

Tagged ‘light, strong and beautiful’, it is the metal of choice for manufacturing motor vehicles, aeroplanes, space ships, and now, electric cars. In fact, by making vehicles lighter using aluminium, they use less fuel and emit fewer emissions without compromising safety standards.

And what the environmentalists must know, but won’t tell, is that aluminium plays a vital role in the transition to a more sustainable energy system, a reduction in the reliance on fossil fuels, and a greener, more circular economy. Aluminium is a critical component in solar panels, electrical transmission systems, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles, for example, and it is its corrosion resistance and light weight that makes it an optimal choice for solar modules.

Because of its remarkable properties, aluminium is likely to remain a key metal by 2050, but with their fixation on bringing to an end what they term ‘extractivism’, environmentalists are oblivious to the fact that bauxite is and will remain the primary raw material source for the metal and that there will be a constant need for our bauxite as the world turns.

Minister of Finance Nigel Clarke is quoted as saying that Jamaica’s bauxite/alumina sector is of vital economic and developmental significance”

“The sector supports jobs (some 5,000) and in the past two years has generated between US$300 and US$500 million in foreign exchange each year. In the past (with all companies operating), foreign exchange earnings have been even higher.”

Even higher, as with the return of Jamalco into the manufacturing arena last quarter, the mining and tourism sectors were credited for Jamaica’s economic growth October – December 2022.

According to the Planning Institute of Jamaica, “the goods-producing sector of the economy expanded by 3.4 per cent which was led by positive upturns from the mining and quarrying industry up almost 116 per cent following previous quarters of contraction” .

As we see how the appeal unfolds, I go back to The Gleaner’s call for urgent dialogue on bauxite, which was expressed in an editorial of January 1. The editorial summed up that “we believe there is value in the bauxite industry and that its future need not be one of bitterness and confrontation. And that there is an obligation to build consensus, which is the responsibility of the government.”

I think both sides in this argument would want to seek a balance because surely, the conversation needs to make the national interest their chief concern and care taken to avoid one-sided and unfounded statements.

As for a JE-inspired transition plan, the closest I have seen to such a plan is one proposed by a university lecturer , who, in a bold attempt to suggest alternatives, thought that the agricultural earnings from a phased-out crude bauxite export would suffice the nation’s coppers. He then blithely offers to train the displaced bauxite workers in agriculture.

Ward missed the point that bauxite is already one of the largest players in the agricultural sector with land-reclamation programmes that restore land after mining, crop farming, greenhouse technology, agro-industry, JAS supportive programmes, and now, testing the waters for aquaculture as a viable occupation, all this side-by-side with mining.

The judgment in court will leave little time for celebration as work must continue to ensure that Jamaica is the real beneficiary. In the meantime, the only injunction I would suggest would be to keep Sunday’s exuberant joy out of the Monday morning sermons. A more sober text could be taken from Deuteronomy 8: 7-9, “For the Lord thy God bringeth thee to a good land … a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.”

n Lance Neita is a communications specialist and author. Send feedback to lanceneita@hotmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com