Save the Sphinx

Well, the Pyramids are secure from those nasty robber barons: the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), following consultations with the World Conservation Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has announced that its member companies will neither explore nor mine in UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

At first blush the idea seems unexceptionable, and no loss for the mineral industry. Nobody seriously supposes that the belfries of Wallonia and Flanders (designated as a Heritage Site in 1999) or the Temple of Angkor (designated 1992) are going to be demolished or moved to make room for a headframe. For the big companies that make up the Council, the undertaking is painless public relations.

Excuse our prospector’s compulsion, then, to scrape some overburden off this outcrop and see what lies beneath. Certainly there is nothing wrong with this comment from Sir Robert Wilson, chairman of Rio Tinto and of the Council: “we understand that the analysis of all options for land use will sometimes mean that mining projects cannot proceed because unique and sensitive biological and cultural values would be compromised if they did.”

Quite so: but that is what government regulation is for; that is what environmental impact assessments are for; that is what the give-and-take and value judgments of the approvals process are for. It does not mean that a single rule can be made to apply to every case of mineral development, or that there is any good in putting whole classes of land out-of-bounds to mineral exploration or mining.

Nor is it obvious to us that the ICMM has a mandate to set the compliance bar for others in the industry. The Council is fifteen large mining and metals companies (most are financially solvent). They are not all explorers, and some are “downstream” specialists rather than mine operators. They do not, because they cannot, speak for mid-tier mining companies or for junior exploration companies. Yet it is more often explorers and project developers, rather than the big boys, that get hit by First World anti-mining interests when they try to move projects ahead. For the Council to make an accommodation with international bodies and non-governmental organizations on a whole industry’s behalf is a little incongruous.

And that is precisely the place this idea is going to: Achim Steiner, the Council’s director-general, speaks of having “created a threshold for corporate responsibility against which they, and indeed others, in the extractive industry will be assessed.” Why, thank you, Mr. Steiner, for screwing others’ futures to your members’ sticking-post.

In truth, this undertaking puts a new blade into the hands of anti-mining preservationist groups, which they can use on any mining or mineral exploration project, not just the ones operated by the members of the ICMM. Not because — to use another burlesque example — there is great danger of a drill program in the Hermitage Museum or in the Serengeti National Park, but because the designation process for a Heritage Site could easily become a knockout punch on any project someone doesn’t like. So, too, is the expectation that other companies must follow the lead of the ICMM’s member companies. Those particular shackles may fit less well on a company whose future depends on getting a project approved.

It is no doubt wise to try and engage the groups that would oppose mining projects, to get their commitment to a process rather than to see them mount a blanket opposition to the industry. But agreements are means, not ends, and agreements that weaken the industry’s position in this fashion are not the kind that will bring us to the ends we are seeking.

UNESCO’s program director, Francesco Bandarin, said he hoped that “such a clear statement by the major mining companies in the world [sic] will significantly reduce direct or indirect impacts by mining on World Heritage Sites all over the world.”

Bandarin’s comment, apart from giving us an insight into his view of who’s who in the industry, might be right, you know. Let’s consider another World Heritage site: that of the town centre of Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic. UNESCO’s own decision committee said the Church of St. Barbara (nota bene) and other buildings of the town centre had “particular architectural and artistic quality and . . . a profound influence on subsequent developments in the architecture of Central Europe.”

And they were built because, in Kutna Hora, people mined silver.

Similarly, over on the German side of the Harz Mountains, Goslar — the town near the Rammelsberg mines — is a World Heritage Site. And let’s not forget World Heritage Sites at Zollverein and Vlklingen, both monuments to the steel and coal industry of the Saar and Ruhr. Over in Poland, the mines of Wieliczka rate a Heritage Site protection; in Slovakia, it’s Banska Stiavnica, the mining town that was the home of Europe’s third-oldest mining school. In Sweden, it’s the Falun copper mines and the Engelsberg iron works.

Or on this side of the Atlantic, the Guanajuato Heritage Site, with its “fine Baroque and neoclassical buildings resulting from the prosperity of the mines.” There’s Cuzco in Peru, and in Brazil, there’s the Sanctuario do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Minas Gerais, an extraordinary church — built by the miner Feliciano Mendes.

Whether or not it’s wise to keep mining out of World Heritage Sites, one thing is certain: without new mines, there will be rather fewer World Heritage Sites for the mandarins and Bandarins of the future to designate.