Mining: does not count well in causing damage to the environment

One of the mechanisms used by both mining transnationals and neoliberal governments to justify mining operations while ignoring the reality of their social and environmental impact is to present an alleged impact on growth. economy measured by gross domestic product (GDP).

This, in our opinion, is the case copper mining in our country. Indeed, it is known that this company, which wants to conclude a new concession contract with the state, relies on a well-known consulting company to publicize the alleged performance of its production in GDP. From there, the idea arose that the aforementioned production, taking into account the multiplier effect, would contribute 4.8% to GDP in 2021. The problem is that GDP is not a good way to measure the economic, social and environmental impact of mining.

We continue to put ourselves in traditional economy, which deals with minerals as simple non-renewable resources, it must be recognized that the exploitation and depletion of minerals represents a reduction of what is known in this approach as natural capital.

This means two things. First of all, that from the nation’s view of GDP this decapitalization should be ignored. Second, the sale of resources, as the new contract with the transnational company actually does, does not create income or output, it simply decapitalizes the country. It’s like someone selling their house and thinking that the sale price is new income that they can simply spend without impoverishing themselves. There is an additional problem that the consulting firm hired by the mining company did not take into account: there is not even an adequate method to measure said decapitalization.

The one that is probably closest to him is suggested by El Serafy, which includes making unrealistic assumptions about the duration of reserves, future interest rates, new discoveries and technological changes.

If we look from perspective Ecological economy, Ecological political economy or Political ecology, the shortcomings of the study promoted by the mining transnational become more apparent. As Martínez Alier and Roca Jusmet point out in their book Ecological economics and environmental protection policy (2006), it has been shown that exploitation like copper not only produces good, but also evil, i.e. it has a negative impact on human beings and nature in general. In principle, they should also be subtracted from GDP, despite the fact that the consulting company did not bother to specify that element.

In this case, the problem is that there is no proper mechanism for providing monetary value environmental damage. For example, methods based on the so-called defense costs, i.e. costs necessary for protection from effects of environmental change, are, at best, insufficient. This is clear, for example, when it comes to the damage to human life, as well as the uselessness caused by diseases, which must be recognized as immeasurable. There is no way to give a currency value to impacted items that cannot be restored to their pre-impact state. It is not only about the impossibility of restoring lost human life, nor is it possible to reconstruct lost biodiversity or the impact of surface mining on the landscape. Furthermore, how would one measure the monetary value of the loss of national sovereignty generated by a concession agreement such as the one sought to be imposed? In the discourse of transnational GDP mining is simple false propaganda that we must reject.