by Daniel Stiles / Mongabay
Although hunting is a serious threat to wildlife, deforestation from uncontrolled logging is a bigger danger. Photo credit: Karl Ammann
One of the largest iron ore deposits in Africa is located in a strip 47 kilometers long and three kilometers wide in the Republic of the Congo (RoC), bordering Gabon. A core section of the Guineo-Congolian Forest rises above this vast mineral deposit, and provides a home to flagship endangered species like western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, and forest elephants. Moreover, adjacent to the deposit lies Africa’s fourth largest river by discharge: the Ogooué River. Having been identified by the IUCN as critical for conservation, the Ogooué sports three crocodile species and several fish found no-where else.
Iron ore and wildlife
The rich biodiversity, however, hasn’t prevented the RoC from moving forward on a massive mine project.
The government granted the Zanaga Iron Ore Company (ZIOC) a mining license in August with expectations that the company can produce 2.5 billion metric tons of various types of high-grade iron.
“The development of this world class iron ore project will have a significant beneficial impact on the RoC, both at the grassroots level around the project site, as well as more broadly on the country’s infrastructure and economy,” said Clifford Elphick, Non-Executive Chairman of ZIOC.
Trying to evaluate the impacts on the wildlife in the 1,000 square kilometer mine concession area has been difficult, however. Although a Social and Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) report was completed in April of this year, it has not been made public, as it remains under review by the government.
Still, the companies involved have promised to abide by a number of international agreements to mitigate and even offset biodiversity loss, making ambitious promises that the wildlife in the region will even be better off when they depart, iron ore exhausted.
Yet, conservationists fear all the promises may come to naught: logging companies are stripping the area even before the miners get on the ground.
Corporate stakeholders
As with most large extractive industry projects of this type, ownership and management of the Zanaga mine are complicated. Glencore Xstrata, the Anglo-Swiss giant, holds a 50% + 1 share ownership of the project and will manage it through a local company MPD Congo. Meanwhile, ZIOC owns the 50% -1 share holding.
The Zanaga open pit mine project, which will cost nearly $5 billion, is expected to produce 45 million metric tons of iron ore concentrate a year when it reaches peak capacity. First production is expected in the third quarter of 2016 with a targeted life of 30 years. The ore will be transported by slurry in a 366-kilometer pipeline running from the mine to a new deep-water port just north of Pointe-Noire, which will be built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation. It looks like most, if not all, the ore will be shipped to China.
All of this planned infrastructure, the ever-expanding pit mine, and the hundreds of people attracted to the area by the mine will likely have an enormous impact on the forest and wildlife. But the companies have a plan.
Biodiversity safeguards in the mining industry
In recent years, a number of initiatives have been launched to guide planning and management of huge extractive projects such as Zanaga to minimize negative impacts both on local communities and the environment. Probably the most comprehensive is the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Program (BBOP), supplemented by the Equator Principles. Both were introduced in 2012, following years of development by conservation groups, financial institutions, and corporations that operate in areas of high biodiversity and ecological importance
The Zanaga mine project is a good case study for the BBOP and Equator Principles to assess how well they work in a real-world setting. The mine and other infrastructure are not scheduled to begin until early 2016, but planning now is essential.
Agreeing to ten principles in 2009, the BBOP standard is presented as a hierarchy of Principles, Criteria and Indicators (PCI): an architecture similar to that used in a number of other standards, such as the Forest Stewardship Council, the Marine Stewardship Council, and the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil. Although the PCI focuses on biodiversity, the principles also embrace socioeconomic and cultural values, since these must be taken into consideration in following what is termed a “mitigation hierarchy” that aims for no net loss or a net gain of biodiversity, after “biodiversity offsets” are planned.
A mitigation hierarchy is a planning tool that intends to limit as far as possible the negative impacts on biodiversity from development projects. It is composed of four steps: avoidance, minimization, rehabilitation and restoration. For impacts that can’t be avoided, the BBOP calls for a biodiversity offset. This could include restoration of a degraded habitat, arrested degradation or averted risk, or protecting areas where there is imminent or projected loss of biodiversity.
Then there are the additional Equator Principles. Most of the lending institutions that are big enough to finance a mining project are now signatories to the Equator Principles, which incorporate the environmental and social Performance Standards of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private investment arm of the World Bank.
The most significant influence from these lender policies is the IFC’s PS6, which has now been adopted by 76 Equator Bank financial institutions responsible for more than 70 percent of large project (>$10 million) financing in developing countries.
The PS6 requires funding recipients to demonstrate “No Net Loss” for impacts in natural habitat and a “Net Positive Impact” for biodiversity as a result of project activities in critical habitat. Plans to meet these goals are established during the Social and Environmental Impact Assessment process.
Since the Social and Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) report cannot at present be examined, mongabay.com asked the mining company on the ground, MPD Congo, directly about their assessments.
“The SEIA was prepared in line with international standards and norms for a mining project,” responded John Merry, the company’s Director of Environment and Communities. “The associated studies were completed with a number of consultants and partner organizations to develop a comprehensive baseline for the project area.”
The company worked with both the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Biodiversity Consultancy, an independent firm, to create a biodiversity offset plan. For its part, WCS has been conducting conservation work in the area for a number of years and provided the results of their research to the mining companies.
According to Merry, the company’s offset plan “is intended to compensate for those impacts that cannot be completely avoided or mitigated during the mining process. Key elements of this plan have been incorporated into the SEIA and a commitment to support the establishment of the Ogooué-Leketi National Park, has been agreed with the Government as part of the Project Mining Convention.”
In 2004, the RoC government promised to establish the Ogooué-Lékéti National Park immediately adjacent to the proposed mine site – but the park has yet to be gazetted. The promised park, which would cover 2,300 square mile (600,000 hectares), is an Important Bird Area that contains valuable hardwood trees up to 60 feet tall and a wide variety of both forest and savannah wildlife. Plant diversity is also high.
The RoC is the least surveyed forested country in tropical Africa for wild plant species, according to the famed Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. In 2009, MPD Congo financed the most specimen-intensive collecting trip in Congolese history. After three field trips to the Zanaga mine concession area and the proposed Ogooué-Leketi National Park, Kew botanists found140 plant species previously unknown in the RoC.
Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1006-sri-stiles-zanaga-mine.html
