4 - The Grass Roots & Social Organisation

Summary

Community-based resource conflicts often arise over issues involving the exploitation of these resources by transnational corporations. This can cause subsequent problems of environmental damage; the undermining of rights (including human rights, the right to consultation and information, the right to compensation and the right to share in the benefits) and the inability of national governments to regulate transnational corporations and protect their citizens and the environment. Governments and companies invariably formulate mineral policies in the developing world with little consultation with those communities affected.

Such communities are regarded as objects of development and not participants in this process. When such communities begin to organise themselves it is possible for them to articulate the adverse affects that some mineral production can have. For example in Sierra Leone the development of Kimberlite mining has been undertaken in some cases close to residential areas. Giant pits have been left using large earth moving machinery and old decaying plant and machinery have been abandoned. Both these represent death traps for curious children. Moreover, much of this mining has led to environmental destruction of agricultural land. In highlighting these factors through community-based organisations, such communities become important social actors that need the acknowledgement of governments if not foreign investors.