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| Samantara with the Dongria Kondh/ Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize |
Prafulla Samantara has been threatened, kidnapped and
jailed trying to stop a huge mining project on sacred tribal land in Odisha, India. But he is not afraid and, at 65, not ready to
retire. ‘I will keep on fighting until my last breath. I cannot betray the
people, the cause,’ he told me when I met him in London in late Spring.
The Indian
social justice activist won the 2017 Goldman Environmental Prize for Asia for his 12-year campaign to block the
mine and for securing indigenous communities’ voting rights on such projects.
From a young age, he witnessed the impact of mining and
industrial development on small farming communities and the growing
inequalities between rich and poor. ‘I’ve seen working people and those at the
bottom of society being exploited and suffering. Equality and justice became my
guiding principles.’
Yet he recognizes that development is necessary, but not
at all costs. ‘In India, 60 million people have been displaced over the last 60
years because of big projects such as mining and dams. Indigenous people are
not consulted. They are marginalized, even though they are the owners and
guardians of natural resources.’
Odisha, the eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal
where he grew up, is known for its pristine forests, high mountain
peaks and numerous rivers; but also for its vast reserve of minerals –
almost a third of the state is under mining
concessions.
The Odisha Mining Company had agreed a deal with
London-based Vedanta Resources to gouge a $2 billion open-pit bauxite mine on
the Dongria Kondh’s land without consulting them.
‘The Dongria Kondh don’t
believe in religion, but in nature. The Niyamgiri Hills are their gods. They
get everything from them: their entire livelihood and their social and cultural
identity. They believe it’s their duty to protect them at all cost.’ The mine
would not only have destroyed their homeland, but also polluted water for
millions downstream as far as the Bay of Bengal, and destroyed large areas of
protected forests which are home to rare wildlife including elephants and the
Bengal tiger. In anticipation of receiving the mining licences, Vedanta
illegally annexed 148 acres of forest and bulldozed 12 villages.
You can read my article on Samantara for New
Internationalist here.
