The Real Cost of Mining

Mining is very prevalent in our society even if a majority of us very rarely see it. We depend on it to
retrieve our precious metals. Mining is how we are able to have all these great types of technologies
such as our computers, ipads, and tablets, not to mention all of our jewelry. All of these things rely
on mining. But many people do not see the true cost of mining. This is the essence of Karl Marx’s
commodity fetish, meaning that we as a society forget the source of these things and only focus on their
value.

This begs the question, what is the true cost of mining? What does it cost to get a gold wedding band?
During our last unit, our group visited Na Nong Bong village, which is being affected by the gold mine built next to their village. Mea Rot, a villager in Na Nong Bong, stated that her brother who worked for the mine as a security guard had recently fallen ill because of the chemical exposure he experienced at the mine. Her brother suffered from a seizure that paralyzed the left side of his body. He has received no compensation from the mine. This community suffered from health problems such as rashes, stinging eyes, and muscle aches on a regular basis. The health care professionals that the villagers visited were not familiar with health problems such as cyanide poisoning and could not adequately help the villagers. Moreover, the villager’s crop yield plummeted when the mine was built. The crops they were able to produce where contaminated from the mine so the villagers could not consume them. For this reason, the villagers had to switch from growing rice to growing rubber trees. The switch from rice to rubber trees is much more significant because growing rice has been this village’s way of life for many generations, but that way of life is now over. This also forced the villagers to buy their food because they could no longer grow their own. The mine has taken this community that was once completely self-sustainable and forced them into the consumer market.

This community was affected because the waste from the mine is seeping into their water supply and
the ground. In Thailand three are mostly open pit mines which really just means they are extremely
large holes in the ground. This creates a lot of excess waste rock. Once the gold is above ground, the ore is crushed and put into huge piles and sprayed with cyanide. Cyanide causes the gold to leak out of the ore. The left over ore which is now contaminated with cyanide is usually abandoned. A rice grain sized  dose of cyanide is lethal. To produce the amount of gold to make one gold wedding band produces 18 tons of wasted ore. The overall waste for every ounce of gold is 79 tons. This waste seeps into the ground contaminating the village’s water sources and crops. In 2006, the Provincial Health Office of Loei conducted blood tests and found that 54 of the 279 villagers tested were suffering from cyanide poisoning. There has not been another round of blood tests since then.

The amount of waste that is produced from mining compared to the amount of reward is shocking.
Whole communities and their way of life are devastated and the environment is destroyed. To top
things off, the villagers do not get any of the benefits from mining and have all of the consequences.
This is not an uncommon situation. All across the world, rural communities are suffering at the expense of wealthier urban individuals.

Morgan Washburn
Loris College

Rethinking Education in a Globalized World

Just last week we CIEE students on the Development and Globalization program in Thailand had the opportunity to talk to an NGO leader named P’Suvit.  He introduced us to the argument that education in Thailand encourages capitalism, and perpetuates the gap between poverty and wealth.  The Thai school system has many aspects that propel the students toward consumerism and capitalism.  For example, the subjects in Thai schools are all taught in the Central Thai language, even though different dialects are spoken at home in many regions.  The Isaan (Northeast) region of Thailand (which happens to be the poorest region) for instance, speaks Lao at home but all the children are taught in the Central Thai language.  This is national law.  The outcome is that the students who speak central Thai at home (who also happen to live in the wealthier areas of Thailand), end up doing better in school and can thus attain higher positions in the workforce upon graduation.

    P’Suvit stated that the Thai government is using its people within the education system as tools for increasing capitalism in Thailand and raising its international status as a developing country.  By taking people out of their small villages and placing them in cities and urban areas, they will inherently rely less on their sustainable livelihoods and will start to rely more heavily on consumerism, thus increasing the economy and cash flow within the country.  He argues against sending kids to schools run by the government, and instead advocates self-teaching and local education.  
    As an American college student it was hard for me to wrap my mind around his argument.  For me, education was never an option—it is a necessary step so that later in life I can have a good and meaningful job.  Participating in the capitalist system is just another routine step forward for me—getting a good paying job is an objective for most US citizens.  I had never before questioned the necessity of getting a formal education.
    However, as Thailand is developing rapidly, with that movement comes the implementation and expansion of the economy and the abandoning of the traditional ways of life.  Although people have already been drawn to urbanization in Thailand, there are still many that prefer the “simple life” of small, rural, communities.  Capitalism now finds its way into these remote places.  Lifestyles are changing, and people are starting to seek the monetary rewards that one can acquire by working in cities.  In order to compete, the youth want to be educated; they are leaving their communities to go to university, getting jobs, and abandoning their sustainable village life for the capitalist economy.
    It didn’t occur to me until I reflected on our exchange with P’Suvit, that this program I am on, CIEE Development and Globalization, is the type of learning that P’Suvit was promoting.  Although we are furthering our education, we are not, for this semester, succumbing to the capitalist system that I have described above.  Here in Thailand, our teachers have been our peers, NGOs, and villagers.  Instead of focusing on individual achievement, we have been learning collectively and working together in solidarity.  Through this method, just like P’Suvit said, that there can be another path of scholarly work removed from larger outside influences such as commerce and government agendas.

Julia Bowman
Whitman College

Pood Pasa Angrit Dai Mai?

In the United States many of the international service projects focus on teaching
English in developing nations. This includes the very prestigious Fulbright Scholarship
and many programs through the CIEE organization. I understand that as the planet
becomes increasing global with Western countries at the epicenter, teaching English is
a competitive strategy. Developing nations strive to meet the standards of a developed
economy. If a student in a developing country can speak English they already have
an edge on other students for career advancement. The modern business world is an
international market with English being the formal language used by most.

Three weeks ago three other CIEE students, four English majors from
Khon Kaen University and Ubon Rachatani University and I traveled to Sisaket province
on the Cambodian border to teach English. Many of the children we taught had family
members that emigrated from Cambodia and spoke Khmer as well as Thai. Most of the
children I taught are barely going to make it through 8th or 9th grade and will then become
farmers or take over the family trade such as selling food. My cultural biases tell me that
there is something wrong with this trend. Being a farmer makes you poor. Living in rural
Thailand makes you poor. If you are poor you are unhappy, right? If these children
stayed in school and learned English they could get better paying jobs and be freed from the bonds of their birth. As I was teaching I couldn’t help but to ask myself, is this true?
I have met farmers here in Thailand and they are some of the happiest people I know.
Families that I stayed with in Yasothon were organic rice farmers. They produced
enough rice and vegetables to feed their family and make a profit. None of them knew
English. None of them needed to. They were completely sustainable and truly happy.
So then what would be the point in teaching English to them or these children?

In Thailand through the CIEE Development and Globalization program we
have studied many of the development projects in Thailand such as the trend towards
chemical agriculture, the export of rubber, the creation of dams for irrigation and mining.
A personal conclusion I have taken from exchanges with communities in the areas
surrounding these projects is that development can have negative affects on the way of
life of the rural populations in Thailand. Chemical agriculture and mining has produced
negative health effects for villagers and a deviation from a self-sufficiency economy.
The creation of dams has flooded wetlands that were once utilized by villagers for food
and products to sell, destroying their livelihood. Teaching English has become another
development strategy and I struggle to see fits into this negative trend, if it does at all.

According to the UN a language dies on average every two weeks somewhere
around the world. An article through the CBC News speaks to the loss of languages
throughout the world. The article explains that languages are key to maintaining
indigenous cultural identity and diversity although thousands of languages will disappear
in the generations to come because English is replacing them. When they are no longer
taught in schools and the majority of media is in English these languages become
obsolete. I understand that in the struggle for development competition is pushing the
teaching of English but I can’t figure out if the effects of this push are negative or
positive. Is development making culture disappear? Is globalization destroying rural
communities? Was me teaching English or anyone teaching English in a developing
nation perpetuating this system? I have yet to discover the answer.

Draaisma, Muriel. "CBC News In Depth: Aboriginal Canadians." CBCnews. CBC/Radio
Canada, 22 Feb. 2008. Web. 28 Apr. 2012.
background/aboriginals/endangered-languages.html>

MavaMarie Cooper

University of Michigan

Community Organizing

Prior to this embarking of an adventure of a lifetime here in Thailand I was a student at the University of Michigan. There I solidified my studies when declaring my major as International Studies with a focus on Global Health and Environment with a minor in Environmental Studies. In these such classes, I studied concepts and aspects of life ranging from social injustices, environmental pollution, policy issues, human rights, human interactions and community organizing, and even thought processes which can either perpetuate, support, or even battle these various concepts and aspects. My studies were lecture, textbook, novel, and article based which were followed by lengthy, heated, and satisfying discussions or papers which required me to analyze certain concepts study or even worldwide organizations. Essentially, my education of world and domestic issues has been through an academic lens in the safety of my apartment or whatever comfortable study spot I could manage to find in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am very fortunate to be a part of this rigorous and respected educational institution; however I tell those interested or curious that I excel most through experiential learning. It bridges the gap between the analytical article that can synthesize multiple perspectives and thoughts processes and what really is.

Studying in the field, with those affected, feeling the frustrations and sadness felt by those local powerless community members is simply an education unlike any other. Many experiences such as those where I feel the frustration once understanding how deeply complicated or out of control a situation have stumbled to my feet here in Thailand. Thank God. One experience I am grateful for having the privilege of learning from is a testament to the power of community organizing. Sure, I have read and talked about community efforts to protest, write letters, garner support from allies of varying degrees of importance, or even been approached to join a community organization to fight for a cause. Admittedly, I never had any conviction of any sort to join these organizers. I thought that they were in vain. That fighting at such a simple, small, and seemingly insignificant level would never achieve anything. I was under the impression that the only way to get things done, with permanence was to go from the top down. To change out those in charge, those policy makers, stuff like that. I was proved completely wrong here in Thailand.

On our most recent mining unit, we visited a community of mine protestors in Huay Mong in the Isaan region of Thailand. These villagers formed a community organization to fight two competing mining companies, OLK and TKL, from coming into the area and beginning a gold mine. Their success of preventing a mine from forming for the past 16 years derives from researching and understanding the mining approval process and Thai constitution. As made into law by the government of Thailand, in order to begin the process for rights to mine, the company needs to conduct and Environmental Impact Assessment. However, a company cannot just start an EIA whenever they want, they have to hold a public forum first which would allow an EIA to follow. The community organization exploited this advantage and that is how they’ve managed to fight off the mine for so many years, by simply preventing a public forum from occurring.

Such conviction to protect this mountain is derived from the hearts and souls and these villagers. This is something I have never experienced back in the United States. That is committing oneself to a lifetime of protest and fighting for a mountain.  A piece of land. Sure I love the environment, I am an advocate but for reasons far removed from an emotional, generational, life dependent reason. One community organization member stated that, “if I cannot preserve this mountain it means that I am also hurting my country and other countries”. These community organizers, I have learned, are fighting for so much more than simply a mountain. They are fighting for peace of mind, tranquility, food, a lifestyle, a purpose, a connection that cannot be explained by an anthropologist, sociologist, biologist, or politician.

This community organization of Huay Mong, just as many others I may very well assume, are so powerful because they fight with a common cause. With that common cause, they are very effective and unrelenting. This organization has monthly meetings, maintains relationships with local NGOs, and is constantly working to strengthen their cause and spread the word. 

Kyle Overman

University of Michigan

Commodity Fetishism, Cyanide, and Gold

In Na Nong Bong, the hazards of mining and the TKL mining company have reached the people. They can no longer use rain water or river water because it is too contaminated to drink, but many of the households cannot afford bottled water so they must drink and bathe in the hazardous water. This has occurred because of a gold mine located one km away from the community on Phu Thap Fah Mountain. Why is this gold necessary? Its use within technology and consumerism must be important enough to pursue despite the dangers that mining presents to Na Nong Bong and other marginalized populations. 

Prior to arriving in the Na Nong Bong area, my peers and I learned a great deal about the mining process in Thailand, specifically the gold mining process. At the present time, Thailand only permits open-pit mining, the extraction of minerals from a large man-made pit, rather than traditional mining which is more expensive and hazardous to laborers. There are multiple extraction methods for gold, but the one used most frequently in Thailand is gold cyanidation. This process involves soaking ore in cyanide until the gold is leached out, this cyanide is then stored in tailing ponds which can often leak into soil and nearby water systems. This toxic process incurs environmental and health risks that affect the communities surrounding the mine sites.

The mining process is problematic on all levels, but is seen as a necessary evil by anyone that uses technology. The sentiment that if modernity is to be maintained then we must extract minerals from the earth at an ever increasing rate is unsustainable and unconscionable. There is no way to maintain this level of modernity without critically endangering natural resources and marginalized populations.

The injustice that faces Na Nong Bong speaks to a deeper issue than environmentalism, it is an illustration of the skewed priorities of our modern world. Consumerism is the insatiable desire for goods which is an unsustainable movement that is leading to the earth’s disintegration. If this were not frightening enough, the consumers rarely have the foresight or resources to research where the goods came from so informed decisions cannot be made. It is this willing and demanding blindness which drives commodity fetishism within our consumer culture.

All objects and goods are fetishized by consumers as most people do not know where their dinner came from let alone their cell-phone. Consumers are ignorant of the social and environmental implications of an object. It is made up of resources, and resources were used in its production; the extraction of said resources and assembly of the object takes human labor. All these variables contribute the real cost of an object, but that real cost is rarely charged and so the consumer buys what they think is a replaceable object. It is this planned obsolescence that drives the demand but truly the object is irreplaceable in its global impact.

The willingness of mining companies to ignore human outcry proves that demand on these products outweighs the moral implication in their use. It proves that there is very little thought put into the consumption of minerals. There has been no effort on the Thai government’s part to curb TKL’s cyanide extraction or their plans to mine Phu Lek after Phu Thap Fah has been drained of gold. TKL leaves its tailing ponds unlined, free to leach into the water table, and this sort of cost-cutting occurs because there is no consumer asking “where did my gold jewelry come from and were any people hurt in its creation?” No, those questions are not asked by consumers, because if they were, the consumer would not exist.

Taryn Orona

Beloit College