Human beings have for millennia been using clothes and jewellery to adorn themselves. Jewels have been expressions of our creativity and need for social identity, status and power. But today, we need to evaluate every activity of human beings in the light of ecological wisdom and human justice. Our obsession with how we appear to others and with buying things has been a deadly formula for living with illusions.
For most people today, gold is synonymous with jewellery. What is the other half of the gold story – the part we do not know when we buy a piece of gold jewelry. Without preface, this is it: along with buying long term security, social stature, and a ‘beautiful’ ornament, we would also have:
- helped the arms trade in South Africa,
- aided in the building of world’s biggest toxic mine (soon to be visible from outer space) in the Ajikwa River, Indonesia.
- actively participated in the 3 billion liters of cyanide spill that eliminated all aquatic life in the Omai River
- contributed to the severe lead poisoning and death of children in the Peruvian town of La Oroya, and
- aided in the brutal killings, child abuse and plundering of the local people in the Hugawmg valley in Burma
These are certainly not happy associations of the metal that is symbolic of love (heart of gold), purity (as good as gold) and achievement (striking gold). Gold is often considered essential to seal a marriage and create a sense of sacredness in temples and churches. Given the hold that this metal has over the human psyche in many cultures, taking a critical look at the socio-environmental impacts involved in buying gold will certainly not be a pleasant task.
In her book, ‘Story of Stuff’*, the author, Annie Leonard, says – “I’d seen gold mines in South Africa. I knew that gold mining is horribly polluting, is routinely linked to human rights violations, and that more than three-quarters of the gold mined around the world ends up in jewelry. Since there is a lot of gold in jewelry rattling around in old ladies’ dresser drawers and increasingly in piles of e-waste, why fuel the market for mining more?”
The answer is that, apart from an ever increasing need for gold jewellery, the metal is used in many commodities – dentistry to glassblowing to stockpiling wealth. Gold is also used in electronics; virtually every modern electronic device—cell phones, laptops, televisions, GPS systems, and MP3 players – has a bit of gold in it.
The Eternal Gold Rush - The beginning of the blood sport
In 1848, a man named James Marshall working on a saw mill in Northern California found the shiny metal in the American River in Coloma. Marshall’s discovery led to the Gold Rush of 1849. Although, the tradition of mining gold dates back to at least as early as the first millennium B.C., the gold rush that started in 19th Century had no parallel. It led to the white population in California soaring from 13,000 to 3,00,000 by 1854, while the Native Americans were massacred, their lands rich in gold reserves seized and their numbers reduced to one fifth of its earlier levels within two decades.
From Government sponsored annihilation of the natives to the selling of their children as slaves, gold is a metal that has caused unspeakable human misery in documented history.
Ironically, most American Indian cultures considered gold useless and saw much greater value in other minerals of utility, such as obsidian, flint, and slate.
Mining – the poisonous process
Most of us may be aware of the barbaric gold rush, but imagine it is a thing of the past, something that happened far away. But the mindless destruction of human life and the environment continues in Indonesia, Burma, South Africa and many other places where gold is mined. Today, Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, often called the lungs of the Earth is under immense threat from gold rushes in that region.
Many gold mines employ a process known as heap leaching, which includes dripping a cyanide solution through huge piles of ore. The solution strips away the gold and is collected in a pond, then run through an electro-chemical process to extract the gold. 99.99 percent of the heap becomes waste. At the same time, the cyanide also extracts toxic metals, including cadmium, lead, and mercury. To cut costs, the heaps are often abandoned.
Gold mining areas are frequently studded with these immense, toxic piles, some of them reaching heights of 100 meters (over 300 feet), nearly the height of a 30-story building, and can take over entire mountainsides. A few mines use hydraulic mining to extract gold using high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock materials and sediments which has a devastating effect on natural environment and agricultural systems.
Two-third of the global gold output comes from low-income or lower-middle-income countries like Mali, Tanzania, Ghana, Guinea and are often considered as a big economic opportunity for these communies; the reality is that local communities usually bear the costs of mining in the form of environmental damage and pollution, loss of traditional livelihoods, long term economic problems and deteriorating public health. With little of the profit passed back to the community, the benefits of the mine usually go to investors overseas and the central Governments who often do not respect the spiritual and cultural connections indigenous people have to their land and environment.
Snippets
of Gold Mining Stories
The Indonesian province of West Papua is home to Lorentz National Park, the largest protected area in Southeast Asia. As early as 1973, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc. had begun chasing veins of gold through nearby formations. The resulting open-pit mine, Grasberg, operated by its subsidiary PT Freeport Indonesia, has already ruined its immediate environment. It dumps 110,000 tons of toxic mine tailings a day into the Ajikwa River, and by the time it closes in 30 years, it will have excavated a 230 square-kilometer hole in the forest that will be visible from outer space.
In 1995, a tailings dam broke at the Omai gold mine in Guyana (one of the largest open-pit mines in the world), releasing some 3 billion liters of cyanide-laden tailings into nearby rivers. According to the Pan American Health Organization, the spill eliminated all aquatic life in the Omai River.
In the Peruvian town of La Orova, site of smelter operated by the US-based Doe Run Corporation, a study by the Peruvian Ministry of Health revealed that 99 per cent of the children have severe lead poisoning, and 20 per cent of these children needed urgent hospitalization.
The Indian Scenario
In India, Gold was first mined in the area, now Kolar Gold Fields (KGF), Karnataka state, prior to the 2nd and 3rd century C.E. This was done by the digging of small pits. KGF is the world’s second most deep Gold mine and although shut down 10 years back due to the high cost involved and less productivity, the Indian Government has given a nod to revive the mines.
The continuous mining activity for the last 100 years in KGF has resulted in the accumulation of huge dumps of mining waste (mill-tailings) occupying about 10% of the total area of the township. In additions, tailing dumps rise to a height of about 30m from ground level amidst the human settlements – the pollution to land, water and air is said to have caused cases of cyanide poisoning, Silicosis and Caplan syndrome, mostly in miners.
India is the world’s largest single consumer of gold, as Indians buy about 25% - 800 tons - of the world’s gold, every year, mostly for jewelry. India probably has the largest amount of gold held by a large population. Adding to the compulsions of tradition, media pushes us to believe that a gift of gold is the best way to symbolize love or commitment.
How can we move towards conscious jewellery?
As human beings we do not seem to be able to ‘renounce’ anything even if know it is self destructive – to ourselves or to the future of our civilization. Also, while mining enough gold for an average gold wedding ring creates about 20 tons of hazardous mining waste, this fact and other gruesome ones are not popularised since it is a matter of profits for many - hence most people are blissfully unaware of how dirty gold actually is.
So what are the options?
- First of all, understand and spread awareness of the sad and brutal stories behind gold.
- Since most of the gold is used for jewelry and two-thirds of gold sold is newly mined, old gold is a good choice – transforming old or unusable jewellery into new usable ones.
- Those of us who can, can stop buying gold and avoid adding to the inhuman and mindless destruction.
- For those who are stuck on buying new gold, there are still ways to lessen the impact. In US, there are a number of jewelers who have committed to ensuring that the gold in their wares wasn’t produced at the expense of local communities, workers, or the environment. The No Dirty Gold campaign has developed a set of voluntary guidelines called the Golden Rules that jewelry retailers can sign on to in order to promote environmental, worker, and community rights. You can find out which jewelers are on board at www.nodirtygold.org.
- In India, at the moment, we don’t have any such movement to ensure gold comes from a ‘clean’ source, but it is time we start switching from new gold to buying previously owned or recycled gold.
- There are many Indian traditional art and crafts which make jewelry out of jute, wood, inlay work, which are very beautiful to wear and fortunately are becoming popular with the younger generation.
The issues of climate change and ecological destruction are not for Governments alone to deal with. We need bottom up solutions which may seem powerless at an individual level, but shifts in consciousness over a period of time are essential to deal with the multitutde of social, financial, ecological and political crises we are faced with. Let us transition to conscious jewellery – we could create our own jewellery as well and enjoy the fun and fulfillment of giving them to friends!
*(Annie Leonard traveled worldwide for 20 years studying the horrible stories behind the stuff we consume and compiled it into a short film called ‘Story of Stuff’ and then a book by the same name)
Sources:
Snippets
of Gold Mining Stories
The Indonesian province of West Papua is home to Lorentz National Park, the largest protected area in Southeast Asia. As early as 1973, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc. had begun chasing veins of gold through nearby formations. The resulting open-pit mine, Grasberg, operated by its subsidiary PT Freeport Indonesia, has already ruined its immediate environment. It dumps 110,000 tons of toxic mine tailings a day into the Ajikwa River, and by the time it closes in 30 years, it will have excavated a 230 square-kilometer hole in the forest that will be visible from outer space.
In 1995, a tailings dam broke at the Omai gold mine in Guyana (one of the largest open-pit mines in the world), releasing some 3 billion liters of cyanide-laden tailings into nearby rivers. According to the Pan American Health Organization, the spill eliminated all aquatic life in the Omai River.
In the Peruvian town of La Orova, site of smelter operated by the US-based Doe Run Corporation, a study by the Peruvian Ministry of Health revealed that 99 per cent of the children have severe lead poisoning, and 20 per cent of these children needed urgent hospitalization.
