Photo: Mark Fosh. CC BY 2.0
This is a message from Actionaid, a charity which has confirmed it has sought permission from the relevant authorities for the demolition of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
We’e protesting at plans by the British mining company Vedanta Resources to open a huge strip mine to extract bauxite from the Niyamgiri sacred mountain in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.
Niyamgiri and the surrounding forest is the ancestral home of the 8,000-strong Kondh tribe. They worship the mountain – which they believe is home to their God, Niyam Raja – and strongly object to Vedanta’s plans.
ActionAid campaigner, Brendan O’Donnell said: “This is a David and Goliath struggle. We’ve applied to knock down St Paul’s to raise awareness of Vedanta’s outrageous plan to destroy the Kondh’s spiritual home.”
Official studies suggest that mining will lead to massive deforestation, destruction of protected local ecosystems and disruption of key water sources. Yet Vedanta has ignored the Kondh’s protests, and is proceeding with its plans.
O’Donnell continued: “Just as Londoners wouldn’t tolerate the demolition of their cathedral to make a quick buck, so the Kondh people won’t allow their treasured mountain and forests to be destroyed.
“Vedanta’s investors should be appalled that their money is backing the desecration of a sacred Indian site and the destruction of forests on which people rely for food, clean water and a living.”
We want Vedanta shareholders to use their influence to stop the project.
“People need and want development, but projects which threaten to deny tribal communities of their most important asset can’t be seen as a step forward,” O’Donnell concluded.
This blog post was published on 31 July 2008
Thanks for your response, anonymous. I have now corrected the post date.
I certainly do not believe St Paul’s cathedral, perhaps one of the finest buildings ever built, should be demolished.
However I do believe the Actionaid stunt is a good one. Anything that highlights the fact mining companies such as Vedanta have little regard for anything except enriching their own shareholders is probably a good thing.
Unfortunately it is unlikely that a majority of Vedanta’s shareholders will agitate to prevent it from pushing ahead with its plan to create a strip mine on the Niyamgiri holy mountain.
Hopefully other entities (the Indian supreme court / more powerful charitable organisations?) might force it to scrap the plan.
It is also worth bearing in mind there are certain ethically responsible investors such as F&C which have been doing a very good job in forcing rapacious companies that have zero interest in environmental and human rights concerns to shape up. Hopefully (if they own Vedanta shares) F&C might step in here.
Already the Norwegian government has excluded Vedanta from its national pension fund investments “due to an unacceptable risk of complicity in present and future severe environmental damage and systematic human rights violations.”
Wikipedia says that Vedanta Resources has been “repeatedly accused of multiple environmental and human rights abuses, ranging from inadequate handling of hazardous waste, to forced eviction, violence and bribery.”
If so, a much brighter light needs to be shone on this company and it deserves to become an international pariah.
Ian Fraser
First of all, I did not realise you could travel in time, can you teach me how? (Your post date…)
Second of all, I’d be interested to know where you stand on this.
Thanks
I’ve only recently come across your blog, and have added your feed to netvibes – just wanted to know where you stand on topics such as sustainability, preservation of local cultures and such.
Knowing India as I do (being Indian), it is highly unlikely that the Kondhi will prevail. Vedanta have connections at the highest political levels, and a little bakshish goes a long way in India.
Its so depressing.
If true, what you say is really sad. I have a lot of respect for what charities like Actionaid and the campaigner Roger Moody are doing to highlight the environmental and social destruction being caused by companies such as Vedanta Resources. A good overview of the Vedanta story, written by Kavaljit Singh of the Public Interest Research Centre in New Delhi, can be found here : http://www.globalpolitician.com/24035-norway
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