Environmental Mis-Assessment, Development and Mining in Orissa, India

摘要

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) are the pre-project standard for outlining potential environmental and social risks related to large-scale mining. Incomplete or disingenuous EIAs mask the potential social, environmental and economic impacts of large projects. To examine the possible misrepresentation of project risks, this article analyses a set of EIAs for the proposed Niyamgiri mine and related Lanjigarh refinery and refinery expansion in Orissa, India. In contrast to their promises of development benefits, it is argued that the project assessments fail to acknowledge the substantial social impacts for project-affected persons as some face displacement, livelihood change, marginalization and a loss of natural resources. The issues raised here are not unique to these cases, but are representative of a flawed system in which environmental clearance is granted for projects with misleading or mis-assessed EIAs. This article questions the validation of 'development' projects via EIAs which do not thoroughly estimate the sociai risks and costs of projects.