After months of intense lobbying, the Unesco World Heritage Committee
has finally granted Tanzania’s request to hive off part of Selous Game Reserve
to allow mining of uranium in one of the largest remaining wildernesses in
Africa.
Monday’s decision comes as a great relief to the government, whose plan
to alter the boundaries of Selous met strong opposition from environmentalists
on the grounds that mining in the World Heritage Site would have disastrous
consequences.They argued that mining of uranium had caused devastating
environmental and health damage wherever it had been done.
But, at a meeting in St Petersburg in the Russian Federation from June
24 to 6 July 2012, the committee unanimously approved Tanzania’s request to
modify the boundary of the game reserve by 0.8 per cent.
The decision means that some 19,793 hectares (nearly 200 square
kilometres) to the south of the Selous, where uranium deposits are found, will
also be excluded.
The deputy minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Lazaro
Nyalandu, was quick to thank members of the World Heritage Committee, the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Heritage
Centre and all those who supported the country’s application.
He reiterated Tanzania’s commitment to conservation and added that the
decision taken by the Committee gave the country an opportunity to address
social and economic challenges and also acquire resources to further strengthen
the management of the game reserve.
Declared a World Heritage Site in 1982, Selous covers more than 50,000
square kilometres. It is home to the largest population of elephants on the
continent.
According to Unesco, the five million-hectare game reserve also has
large numbers of black rhinos, cheetahs, giraffes, hippos and crocodiles—along
with grasslands and miombo forests. Its diverse landscape retains undisturbed
biological and ecological processes.
Tanzania applied for permission to alter the boundaries of Selous in
January 2011, arguing that extracting uranium in the area was critical for
funding development programmes and driving the economy.
The project will be carried out by an Australian uranium mining firm
called Mantra Resources at a cost of US$ 400million.
Some environmentalists and politicians, including a handful of MPs,
have consistently voiced strong criticism to the mining plan. They maintain
that the project will have devastating consequences on the economic and social
fronts and deal a major blow to the ecology.
German environmentalists and conservationists were in the forefront in
the campaign, arguing that the country risked environmental degradation and
significant pollution of land and water.
They wrote to President Jakaya Kikwete, through the Tanzanian
ambassador in Berlin, to complain that the project was being pursued
irrespective of the potential damage to the environment and the country’s
biodiversity.
The groups threatened to build a global alliance similar to the Stop
the Serengeti Highway coalition which has spread around the globe.
Some environmentalists suggested that the decision to mine the uranium
may have already been taken before an environmental assessment was done. The
government is projected to earn $5 million (about 8bn/-) a year from the mining
while companies are projecting $200 million (about 320bn/-) in annual earnings.
Source: The Citizen, http://www.thecitizen.co.tz, reported by Bernard James
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