
El Salvador bans metal mining in world first - seycombi
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-el-salvador-metal-world.html
======
ShannonAlther
This has apparently been in the works for a while[0] in response to a
ridiculous percentage of El Salvador's fresh water being poisoned by mining
runoff. Good for them, this looks like it solves a lot of problems.

Does anyone know what sort of impact this will have on their economy?

[0][https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2017/mar/30/e...](https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2017/mar/30/el-salvador-makes-history-first-nation-to-impose-
blanket-ban-on-metal-mining)

~~~
otto_ortega
> Does anyone know what sort of impact this will have on their economy?

Pretty much zero. I live in El Salvador. The economy is fucked up since long
time ago, and metal mining was unlikely to help in any way, specially when
most of the profit derived from it was going to leave the country, and the
percentage that would remain here was going to end up in the hands of corrupt
government officials, in the form of bribes or funding for lobbying.

------
sebleon
At first glance, I think this measure makes a lot of sense - profits from
mines mostly leave the country.

That being said, I'd expect this will lead to a surge in illegal mining
operations, which will likely be a lot more environmentally hazardous.

~~~
badosu
I don't understand why you'd be downvoted, this is feasible: see the illegal
sand mining operations in India for instance [0].

[0]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/magazine/sand-mining-
indi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/magazine/sand-mining-india-how-to-
steal-a-river.html)

~~~
thatcat
Some people might see it as sort of a defeatist stance to take. Is it harder
to detect illegal mine or to regulate all mining? Seems they would be easy to
find from satallite images.

~~~
badosu
Wouldn't a stance be to use the argument above to support a set of
(in)actions?

The argument by itself is not moot, and the writer did not explicitly support
an agenda.

~~~
thatcat
It implies (correctly) that the legislation will lead to more problems.

That the comment doesn't suggest action is the form of defeatism I was
refering to. Defeatists don't normally call for inaction they just present all
the problems that action leads to promote inaction.

~~~
badosu
I understand what you mean, but I think you're putting more meaning to it than
it has.

> _Defeatists don 't normally call for inaction they just present all the
> problems that action leads to promote inaction._

Suppose someone called for prohibition again as an action to reduce the
incidence of alcohol-related car accidents and domestic abuse.

You have the information that this leads to a lot of money flowing into the
hands of criminals. How is stating that defeatism?

~~~
thatcat
Not really fair to compare common social activity to industrial pollution. The
context of the comment is why it is defeatist, we're in a world with cheaper
sensors than ever. Environmental pollution regulation enforcement is therefore
cheaper than ever. Stating that "people will just illegally mine which will
pollute more" makes it seem like legislation paradoxically leads to more
pollution, when regulating this behavior is an easier problem to solve than
ever.

~~~
badosu
I can't agree that if you can detect illegal activity you invariably _will_
act against it efficiently, one of the examples from the top of my head is the
Amazon Deforestation.

You're conflating a simple statement that presents factual information to a
mindset.

One in fact can use that information to try influencing people to _be
scared™_. However that is not always the case, and people can for example
offer an alternative.

The case in point is not that I agree or not with the passing of the law, but
that passing it may have unintended consequences, so that you need to account
for that.

The analogy was intended to be used as a context for a debate against decision
makers using factual data, the fact that it's mining or liquor does not make
difference. It was devised to counter-attack your understanding that just by
warning of something bad if you do something else you're being defeatist.

> _Some people might see it as sort of a defeatist stance to take. Is it
> harder to detect illegal mine or to regulate all mining?_

Since you're assuming something implicit in our discussion maybe you can
answer the question yourself.

~~~
thatcat
Op didnt state a fact, he made a somewhat cynical prediction, based on his
belief that restriction of pollution generating activity leads to more
pollution. Its only true if no one enforces the law, which can be easily done
in this case. That is as clearly as i can explain why that seemed defeatist
imho which I thought explained the downvotes.

I'm not trying to make implicit assumptions, that question was rhetorical and
answered in the next sentence.

~~~
badosu
> _I 'm not trying to make implicit assumptions, that question was rhetorical
> and answered in the next sentence. _

Ok, so I'll guess you are assuming it is easy to detect and punish irregular
mining then.

I agree and understand your point as how the increased propensity for illegal
mining can be combated.

I think it was not exactly cynical, and that's coming from someone who
supports El Salvador's action. We need clarification of all possible issues to
understand how to act on them, but I guess at this point it's a difference on
how each one of us took the statement.

That was a good discussion though.

------
specialist
Ages ago, a buddy predicted we'd eventually just mine our own trash for
precious metals. As opposed to recycling, I suppose. Call it "extreme
recycling".

I wonder how close we are to that future.

~~~
parshimers
It's a reality. The nickel smelting operation in Norilsk, Russia is so
polluting that you can mine the topsoil downwind of the smelter feasibly:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/world/europe/12norilsk.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/world/europe/12norilsk.html?ref=world)

~~~
amorphid
That is awesomely terrifying.

------
EGreg
How dare El Salvador try to use facts to claim that these foreign companies
mining their resources don't help their communities but only pollute it!

The anarcho capitalist solution is that the country should privatize their
water supply so that outside companies can then legally buy up the lakes and
pollute as much as they want! After all the companies will have paid people
for it - the people only would have to live there :)

~~~
jacquesm
> The anarcho capitalist solution is that the country should privatize their
> water supply so that outside companies can then legally buy up the lakes and
> pollute as much as they want!

That's roughly what has been happening in several other Latin American
countries. Bechtel being the usual suspect, they specialize at that kind of
trick hand-in-hand with the World Bank.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
My father worked as a chemical process engineer for Bechtel stationed in a 3rd
world country (we all lived there with him too) working on the public-works
water treatment system for the nation's capital - from what I can tell,
Bechtel did go in with honest intentions - but were stalled by local
corruption and lack of political willpower.

~~~
jacquesm
How about Bolivia?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War)

"The World Bank said that "poor governments are often too plagued by local
corruption and too ill equipped to, the World Bank stated that "no subsidies
should be given to ameliorate the increase in water tariffs in Cochabamba".
The New Yorker reported on the World Bank's motives, "Most of the poorest
neighborhoods were not hooked up to the network, so state subsidies to the
water utility went mainly to industries and middle-class neighborhoods; the
poor paid far more for water of dubious purity from trucks and handcarts. In
the World Bank's view, it was a city that was crying out for water
privatization."

That sounds eerily like your comment.

------
zenkat
In _Collapse_, Jared Diamond makes the argument that almost all modern mining
of metals would be economically unprofitable if all the negative externalities
(i.e., cleanup costs) were taken into account.

~~~
driverdan
I assume there's nuance to that you left out. Metal demand is inelastic.
Prices would go up, demand would go down, but there would still be demand.

------
djsumdog
I suspect their head of state will die in a plane crash within a year. Either
that or there will be a military coupe. Double your bets if any of those shut
down were American mining companies.

And before you start saying I should take off my tin foil hat, look up the
1973 coupe in Chile, the Iranian Contras, United Fruit and the documentary
Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

I hope El Salvador keeps mining banned. I really do. But the track record is
that NATO countries tend to "fix" things when their interests are threatened.

~~~
chis
The history is accurate and maybe that would've happened 20 years ago. But I
wonder if globalization + the internet have ended these secret coups. I really
can't imagine a world in which the CIA overthrows an entire government without
anyone leaking it or noticing.

I guess it's possible that the U.S. doesn't care about the backlash, but it
wouldn't be a popular move.

~~~
rangibaby
I dont think so. See: Color revolutions and Arab spring.

~~~
pas
What are you trying to imply? That those were CIA projects?

~~~
blackoil
Even if they didn't devised it, they are definitely sponsoring Syrian rebels.
Also if Putin/Russia, China grow strong enough to challenge US, things will
deteriorate fast.

------
partycoder
This is interesting.

Blocking access to a resource would redirect efforts towards other activities.

Countries with abundance of resources or no restrictions to harvest them are
not always more prosperous, as explained by the concept "resource course":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

------
Arizhel
The problem here is that our technological society needs metals to operate.
But getting those metals is making a big mess in less-developed places like
this, for the benefit of the more-developed places.

So, the solution is simple: mine asteroids. No one cares about pollution in
space.

------
r00fus
It'll be interesting to see how fast banning the pollution results in water
quality changes.

~~~
jacquesm
Or how fast massive sudden un-employment results in riots. Fast change like
this is bound to have side-effects.

> But mining accounts for a minimal portion of their economies and jobs, a
> recent study by various NGOs showed.

Which of course is great when you're sitting in your NGO provided air-
conditioned office. But a few tens of thousands of miners might disagree with
the definition of 'minimal'. For them it likely was all of their income.

I'm all for change like this but I would prefer a more gradual approach. Such
as 'no new people are allowed to be hired for mining' or other more or less
automatic mechanisms.

~~~
kpil
It seems to be a bad deal to get a few thousand jobs at the cost of severe
damage to the environment and public health, while all the money is shifted
out of the country.

~~~
jacquesm
Agreed. But given the level of social security in El Salvador it will
definitely cause some problems. The problem is the latter: all the money being
removed from their economy (as well as the resources, the value of which is
only going up). This goes for almost all resource rich countries South of the
equator with the exception of Australia and New-Zealand.

Colonialism is far from over, it just wears a corporate suit these days.

~~~
astronautjones
The bill is finally coming in the mail for 90s globalism, a dilettante
movement with no regard for the future and an eye on stock market profits, the
question is who is going to pay for it [1].

It's going to happen again when people realize that making Snapchat one of the
most valuable stocks will torpedo the whole market and will make Pets.com look
like someone spilled their drink.

[1](I am American and can clearly see that we are the ones who should shoulder
this blame, and under Trump the lower half will in one way or another)

------
lightedman
This becomes interesting. Many gemstones are also essentially metal ores. I
wonder if this will affect gem and mineral mining/collecting in El Salvador,
which does have a decent reputation in the mineral/gem/lapidary circle.

~~~
ridgeguy
To the extent that gem finds are incident to bulk metal mining operations, it
could decrease gem yield. But I'm not sure what the gems would be.

Stories on El Salvador's mining ban emphasize gold mining. I'm not sure what
gems are found in coincidence with gold, except maybe quartz crystals in
hydrothermal gold deposits.

Silver, copper, lead, zinc and titanium seem to be the other metals mined in
El Salvador. Although there are collectable minerals associated with some of
these (copper->azurite, malachite; lead->galena crystals), I can't immediately
think of gemstones that occur in these metallic ores.

~~~
lightedman
Rose quartz is a primary ore of Titanium. Asterated rose quartz comes from
this area. If you have gold you likely have other heavy metals like iron in
the area, which can lead to garnets. The calcium content in the area lends
itself to making Epidote. Sphalerite is the primary ore of Zinc and also
produces quite impressive gems. Then you'll have volcanic gem rock in the
area, such as multi-colored obsidian.

~~~
ridgeguy
Interesting, thanks.

------
cmrdporcupine
A lot of Canadian mining companies doing really dirty work in Central America.
Makes me ashamed to be Canadian. Glad to see El Salvador assert their
autonomy.

~~~
ced
Not that I doubt it - heard similar tales in Chile - but do you have specific
events in mind?

------
zghst
Too bad we (U.S.) are a a large economy, the only way we could survive and
implement this policy is if we get to space and get good at mining asteroids.

------
bingomad123
Now let us hope all countries follow the suite and ban all metal mining right
away.

~~~
taneq
So you're going to lead the way by stopping using any metal products, right?

Including your computer?

~~~
alexvoda
To such a fallacious reply the recent news of Apple deciding to only use
recycled materials should be enough of a response I think.

~~~
taneq
You're asserting that the human race has mined all the metals that we'll ever
need. Do you really think that's a reasonable position?

------
aaron695
Have they lost the plot? Has HN lost the plot in the comments supporting this.

Why not just ban science?

We need metals to live and prosper.

If it was really that minimal as per 'NGO' advise then the pollution would be
minimal.

Why not just make companies pay fines if they polute? The government obviously
doesn't kowtow to them?

Perhaps if their people weren't so poor you could excuse banning things like
gold and diamond. But this (as the article tells it, I doubt it's close to the
full story) is like going back to the middle ages.

~~~
Spooky23
So, you're ok if I open up a company in your town and dump mercury and
tailings into the water your children drink?

I suggest that you visit or at least read about El Salvador or Guatemala. No
insult intended, but your attitude is both ignorant and offensive.

~~~
astronautjones
We should call Discovery Channel, we found the lost ancestor of Hernan Cortes
in OP

