Vedanta ruining lives in Orissa, alleges new Amnesty report
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A new report from Amnesty International supports the growing resistance to Vedanta’s refinery and mining activities in Orissa’s Lanjigarh district
In a new report published on February 8, 2010, the human rights group Amnesty International has heavily criticised the alumina refinery project of Vedanta Aluminium Ltd in Lanjigarh, Orissa, its six-fold expansion, and its sister company’s plans to mine bauxite in the neighbouring Niyamgiri hills.
‘The companies involved in the mine and refinery projects have ignored community concerns, breached state and national regulatory frameworks and failed to adhere to accepted international standards and principles in relation to the human rights impact of business’, says the report titled ‘Don’t mine us out of existence: Bauxite mine and refinery devastate lives in India’.
The report notes that poor waste management at Vedanta’s alumina refinery in Lanjigarh put at risk the health of 5,000 people, some of whom already complain of skin and breathing problems.
“People are living in the shadow of a massive refinery, breathing polluted air and afraid to drink from and bathe in a river that is one of the main sources of water in the region,” said Ramesh Gopalakrishnan, Amnesty’s researcher on South Asia.
The Vedanta refinery, which became operational in August 2007, is located in an environmentally sensitive area near the river Vamsadhara that provides the surrounding villages with drinking and bathing water. Local people told Amnesty researchers that pollution from the existing refinery had polluted the river and caused a number of health problems.
“We used to bathe in the river but now I am scared of taking my children there. Both my sons have had rashes and blisters,” a local woman told Amnesty International. The organisation recorded many similar accounts from people living around the refinery.
The report quotes Orissa State Pollution Control Board documents that confirm the air and water pollution from the alumina refinery. Yet there had been no monitoring of the situation.
Despite the evidence, the government is considering a proposal for six-fold expansion of the refinery. Neither the Indian authorities nor Vedanta have shared information on the extent of pollution and its possible effects with local communities, the report alleges.
Vedanta refutes the Amnesty allegations. “We are one of the only zero-discharge alumina refineries in the world. This means not a single drop of waste goes outside the walls of the refinery,” Mukesh Kumar, CEO of the Lanjigarh refinery, told AlertNet.
A subsidiary of Vedanta, Sterlite Industries, together with the Orissa Mining Corporation is also under fire for its plans to mine bauxite in the nearby Niyamgiri hills, home to 8,000 Dongria Kondh, a protected indigenous community. The joint venture has obtained environmental clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, though forest clearance from the same ministry has not yet been granted.
The hills are considered sacred by the Dongria Kondh and are essential for their economic, physical and cultural survival. Yet, no process to seek the community’s informed consent has been established, the report says as it sketches the history of how regulations have been circumvented over the years.
A Dongria Kondh man told Amnesty International: “We have seen what happens to other adivasis when they are forced to leave their traditional lands; they lose everything.”
The report recommends that the governments of Orissa and India, as well as the companies involved, ‘must urgently address the human rights abuses caused by current refinery operations. They must ensure that independent and thorough human rights impact assessments for both the refinery and the mine are carried out. These assessments can only be valid if they involve genuine consultations with all the affected communities’.
The report is the latest attack on the metals and mining company Vedanta Resources, listed on Britain’s FTSE 100 top shares index. Last week, the Church of England announced it had sold its US$6 million stake in Vedanta because the company had not shown “the level of respect for human rights and local communities that we expect”. The Norway Pension Fund and Edinburgh-based investment fund Martin Currie have also sold off their assets in recent years, on ethical grounds.
Source: Reuters, February 9, 2010
Amnesty International report: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/, February 2010