Advocacy groups and local communities worry as the Australian mining giant appears set to follow the polluting, destructive example of the Chinese-led Winning Consortium, which has been granted the other half of the Simandou deposit and whose extensive construction is already causing suf ering to the Guinean population.
Conakry - 16 November 2023 - Local communities and international civil society groups worry that Simfer S.A., a consortium led by Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, is at risk of making the same mistakes as the Chinese-led Winning Consortium Simandou (WCS) as it breaks ground on a rail line through community agricultural lands and sensitive biodiversity hotspots. The rail segment will link to a larger, 650 km railroad serving the Simandou iron ore mining project in southeastern Guinea.
Failure to publish Environmental and Social Impact Assessment.
Rio Tinto’s rail segment runs about 75 km, from the company’s mining concession, located in the heavily forested hills of Nionsomoridou Subprefecture (Beyla Prefecture) to the junction with the much longer segment that WCS has already commenced building, in Fredou Commune (Kerouane Prefecture). Yet Rio Tinto has not disclosed information about the project’s environmental and social impacts, nor has it conducted or publicized an environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) as required by Guinean law. In breaking ground before assessing impacts, the company’s actions echo those of WCS, which also began construction on segments of railroad and tunnel before final validation of the required ESIAs.
Communities lose land and livelihoods
Communities along the rail route already cleared by WCS have suffered from project construction, with little recourse. According to a May 2023 report by Guinean advocacy group Action Mines, WCS has taken land without compensating its occupants, spoiled fields with construction mud, and polluted streams that communities used for drinking water. In coastal communities, where WCS has built a port for exporting the iron ore, fish stocks are sodevastated that local fishermen can no longer support their families.
Recently, residents of some communities have filed grievance complaints with an office that
WCS set up to handle complaints internally, but the results have been mixed. In some cases,
WCS has promised to inventory the damages and work out a reasonable settlement. In other
cases, the communities have been told to direct their complaints to specific WCS sub-contractors that may have directly caused the harm.
“The project developers can’t escape their responsibilities to remediate harm caused by construction by pointing their finger at a subcontractor,” said Lalla Touré, Legal Director of Advocates for Community Alternatives, a West African human rights organization that supports the affected communities. “It’s WCS and Simfer that have committed to ensuring respect for international environmental and social standards and compensating people for all damages - including those caused by subcontractors - so they are the ones that must take
responsibility for handling project grievances.”milies.
A gap between promises/commitments and reality
Civil society advocates have raised the alarm about major gaps between the WCS and Simfer’s legal requirements, their public environmental, social, and human rights commitments, and their track record on the ground. “When we compare what they promised to do according to the laws of Guinea with what has happened in the communities, we see that the promises were empty,” noted Toure. “They promised to manage erosion from construction but then flooded fields used for subsistence agriculture. They said they would compensate people fairly for taking their land but then cheated them instead.”
Underplaying risks in the impact assessments
Companies are legally required to prepare environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) and management plans that help communities and regulators make decisions about the project. But in the case of Simandou, analyses by the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide concludes that the companies underplayed key risks and impacts. “ELAW’s analysis shows that the project ESIAs are really weak on water resources and biodiversity,” explained Jingjing Zhang, the Executive Director of the Center for Transnational Environmental Accountability (CTEA), which focuses on the human rights, social, and environmental impacts of Chinese investment abroad. “The companies used outdated data and did insufficient testing to gauge the likely impacts on groundwater and streams. Strip mining always affects water courses, and the streams that will be impacted form the headwaters of the Niger River, a key source of water for thousands of rural communities in five West African countries.”
Guinea is home to roughly two-thirds of the remaining world population of West African chimpanzees. The primates specialists at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), however, concluded that the companies lacked a strong biodiversity management plan, even though almost the entire project crosses prime habitat for the chimpanzee, as well as other critically endangered or protected species such as the African forest elephant and the Western red colobus monkey. While the 650 km rail line largely (but not completely) avoids officially protected zones, the vast majority of chimpanzees and other primates live outside protected areas. Conservation therefore requires careful surveying and planning, and a May 2023 report by a task force of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature concluded that the companies have a long way to go. By contrast, other mining companies in Guinea have gone so far as to set up a whole new national park to offset the wildlife impact of their projects.
Finally, ELAW experts found that WCS drastically underestimated the carbon footprint of the
project, omitting key drivers of greenhouse gas emissions like land use change, the use of heavy fuel oil to generate power, and the smelting of the ore into iron. “The Simandou project looks like a carbon bomb, but we don’t know how bad the damage will be because the analysis is so bad,” said Zhang. “In any case, it certainly blows the international climate change commitmentsof both Guinea and China out of the water.”
Failure to disclose public information
Advocates think that communities would have a better understanding of the dangers they face if Rio Tinto and WCS were to disclose project documents that are still hidden but rightfully should be public under Guinean law. “The communities have filed requests for audit and monitoring reports, key management plans, and certificates of environmental conformity that attest to the Guinean government’s efforts to regulate the impacts of the project, but the companies have completely failed to respond,” said Toure.
An opportunity to do things right
Advocates and community representatives are now worried that Simfer will repeat Winning’s mistakes as it embarks on its own construction phase, as announced on September 30, 2023. “It’s still not too late for Simfer to blaze a different path, but so far, the signs aren’t good,” said Zhang. “We’re particularly concerned that they’ve decided to start construction without first finalizing or sharing their ESIAs.”
Recently, local advocacy group Action Mines called on Simfer to increase transparency, release credible management plans, establish a stronger grievance mechanism, adhere to international standards on social and environmental protection, commit to independent audits, and ascribe to the principle of free, prior, and informed consent. “Rio Tinto needs to convince us that we won’t be faced with another Juukan Gorge situation,” noted Toure, referring to a 2020 debacle in which Rio Tinto destroyed a sacred aboriginal site in Australia – an incident that repeated itself two months ago when blasting damaged a 40,000 year-old rock shelter. “Rio just doesn’t have a credible track record when it comes to protecting values important to local communities.”
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