Renewed push for open-pit mining in Phulbari ignores hard-earned lessons

This year, I found the people of Phulbari quite angry and vigilant on Phulbari Day on August 26. Just days earlier, the finance minister had spoken about resuming open-pit mining in Phulbari, once again bringing people onto the streets. When Prime Minister Tarique Rahman spoke of open-pit mining again on September 2, it sparked protests, rallies and processions in the area.

On August 26, 2006, tens of thousands of people in Dinajpur’s Phulbari upazila—Bangalee and Santal, men and women, old and young—took to the streets, demanding that the UK-based Asia Energy Corporation be driven out of the area and its open-pit coal-mining project be cancelled. The government then took a violent path: three young boys were killed and hundreds injured when a paramilitary force opened fire on the peaceful demonstration. This sparked a massive popular movement. As the protest spread nationwide, the then prime minister, Khaleda Zia, whose four-party alliance was in power, signed an agreement with the people on August 30, 2006, accepting all six of their demands, including banishing the company and banning open-pit mining nationwide. Now when her son is the prime minister, his government is trying to rationalise disastrous open-pit mining by breaking that commitment.

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Although Asia Energy left in 2006, it has not stopped its lobbying since. It changed its name to GCM Resources and, despite holding no licence for the Phulbari mine, remains active on the London Alternative Investment Market on the strength of that old claim, insisting that it still has connections capable of securing authority over the mine. Recent official statements have served to give this company a fresh boost.

In August 1994, Australia-based BHP Minerals, a leading mining company in the world, signed an agreement with the Bangladesh government for a licence to explore and mine coal in Phulbari and five adjacent upazilas. It confirmed that a large reserve of high-quality coal existed in Phulbari. However, it did not proceed with mining and transferred the licence to the newly formed Asia Energy in 1998. Two questions matter here: why did BHP give up such an opportunity, and who set up the new company at the time, with the government’s approval?

Nazrul Islam, a Bangladeshi geologist in Australia who worked for years as a geological consultant for BHP and helped bring the company to Bangladesh, provided some clarity in this regard. When I visited Sydney in June 2008, he expressed concern over Asia Energy’s dubious activities: “I brought BHP to Bangladesh expecting good results from their investment and the highest level of expertise. But now, seeing Asia Energy’s open-pit project, I am terrified. If this is implemented, it will be disastrous for Bangladesh, and I will never be able to forgive myself.”

He knew well why BHP had left, and later wrote about it too. An open-pit mine would have been profitable for BHP, but the coal in Phulbari lies deeper than is viable for open-pit mining, under an 80- to 120-metre thick aquifer. In a region of countless rivers, streams, canals, and wetlands, with heavy seasonal rainfall and a high flood risk, it would not be possible to operate such a mine while meeting Australian standards, let alone that of any other country. Nor did BHP want to repeat a disaster like the Ok Tedi copper mine in Papua New Guinea, where toxic waste contaminated a river and a vast downstream area, forcing BHP to cancel the project and pay a huge amount in compensation. Given Bangladesh’s groundwater resources, the situation here is more complicated. Hence, BHP left at an early stage, well aware of the possible consequences.

However, the second question remains unanswered: how did a new company obtain a licence to do what BHP had not dared attempt, and even receive clearance before an environmental assessment?

In 2005, the BNP-led government formed an expert committee, headed by Buet professor Dr Nurul Islam, to examine Asia Energy’s development plan for Phulbari coal mine. It concluded that the project was unacceptable on economic, environmental, and legal grounds (Expert Committee Report, September 2006), warning that extracting huge quantities of groundwater would drop the groundwater table across a large area, creating a water crisis. The report further found that groundwater would become contaminated with arsenic and other toxic chemicals if the mining project was continued, and that removing the upper soil layer would spread pollution through the region’s waterways, with the entire valley suffering for a long time.

Later, independent experts Roger Moody and Jennifer Kalafut analysed the assessment and resettlement plan, finding a number of inconsistencies (2008). The Patowary Committee (2007-08) and the Mosharraf Committee (2011-12), who were asked to assess the prospects of open-pit mining in Phulbari, also identified serious risks.

The Mosharraf Committee’s report found that 800 million litres of groundwater would have to be withdrawn daily for 38 years (Page 52), with water pollution likely to cause a devastating environmental disaster. Hand-operated tube wells would stop functioning in many places, and ground and surface water across the watershed would suffer long-term contamination, causing a humanitarian catastrophe. The waste to be stored would create what the report likened to a bomb, and resettling nearly 10 lakh people would carry a high risk of social conflict (Page 30). The report further said that, while open-pit mining can raise extraction rates and attract investors, the resulting damage would far outweigh the benefits, making it “in no way acceptable” (Page 15). The ratio of waste to coal is 25 to 1, it noted, and this overburden, stored beside agricultural land and riverbanks, would pollute downstream rivers, canals, and wetlands, with rain washing much of it further into the system (Page 49).

The issue, therefore, is not confined to just the coal mine area. If agriculture and water systems across northern Bangladesh are disrupted, the entire region may become not only unsuitable for cultivation but uninhabitable for people as well. Who will address the food deficit from the loss of fertile land, and who will take responsibility for the millions affected, for those displaced and the families torn apart, all for a profit-making, demonic project?

Had people remained passive, this project would have gone ahead, with open-pit mines established in both Phulbari and Barapukuria. With many parts of northern Bangladesh facing water shortages, the situation would have reached the level of an outcry, and many rivers, streams, canals and wetlands might have ended up worse off than the Buriganga. The destruction of agricultural land would have caused a devastating decline in food production. It was the people who protected us from this destruction, with their lives.

The popular uprising in Phulbari 20 years ago was much more than a struggle to protect coal, water, land, and livelihoods from looters. It also raised questions about the prevailing development paradigm and demanded a new, people- and nature-friendly model of development, calling for public authority over public resources against corruption and bad deals. The Phulbari resistance showed that when a government takes a position against people’s rights and well-being, the people have the right and responsibility to act as guardians of the country. The people of Bangladesh have taken on this role time and again, and the Phulbari uprising, with its continued resistance against a disastrous multinational plunder project, gives them strength and hope for a better future in which national interest is upheld. That is why it matters.

Anu Muhammad is former professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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