pushing boundaries: expanding approaches to health, science and resource development at home and...
TRANSCRIPT
Pushing Boundaries: Expanding Approaches to Health, Science and
Resource Development at Home and Abroad
Craig R. Janes
September 17, 2015
Agenda
• Context: health challenges of extractive industry development
• Global strategies for prevention/mitigation• Briefly: Mongolia case• Contested terrain
– What determines health?– Project specific (pvt sector) vs. strategic (gov’t)
approaches– Interdisciplinarity
Context: Extractive Industries in LMICs
• Insatiable global demand for metals and energy
• ICMM: Many of most imp. mining countries are emerging economies; largest mines with largest “footprint” are in “developing countries.”
• Ernst and Young: “Rapid growth” and “Emerging” economies the “future growth engines for the mining industry.”
ICMM (2012). Mining’s contribution to sustainable development. London, UK. Ernst & Young (2015). Mining in rapid growth economies. http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_-_Mining_in_rapid-growth_economies/$FILE/EY-Mining-in-rapid-growth-economies.pdf
Well-Documented Health Effects• Features of extractive industries that
pose risks (and some potential benefits) to community health– Hazardous materials control and
disposal– Population influx– Resettlement and relocation– Water management– Linear features (roads, energy
corridors)– Hazardous materials control and
disposal– Changes in expenditure and
consumption– Infrastructure/facilities (waste
management, sewage treatment, etc.)1IFC (2009) Introduction to Health Impact Assessment. Washington, DC: World Bank. www.ifc.org/sustainability.
Placer gold operation, central Mongolia
WHO: Other Important Considerations
• Social and health footprint of mineral extraction much larger than the deposit
• Not only the result of one project– Cumulative effects of
related activities, often regionally concentrated
Examples• Chad pipeline
– Unanticipated respiratory infections and disorders, mental health impacts, loss of livelihoods, nutrition-related disorders
– Social/political conflict– Facilitated HIV
transmission
• South Africa mining sector– Housing conditions and
TB/HIV– Apartheid, migration,
amplification of HIV
Chad-Cameroon Pipeline
Prevention Strategies
• Lessons:– Wide range of impacts across the determinants of
health that should have been identified and mitigated. Working in weak public governance contexts:
– Aligning multiple institutions to engage in appropriate regulation
• Expose weaknesses in the traditional “Environmental Impact Assessment” process
A few words about EIAs
• Built on the 1969 US-NEPA: 190 of 193 UN now countries legislate EIAs
• Original NEPA language: identify and mitigate impacts on human health
• In practice– Focus on air, water and soil contamination– Reinforce divide between “hard” and “soft”
science, direct and indirect, certainty and uncertainty
Last 15 Years• Strategies to comprehensively incorporate health
in EIAs endorsed by WHO, many European countries, Canada initially… the HIA
• Fused with WHO’s CSDH model: HIA based on the social determinants of health
• Parallel: private sector selective focus on “performance standards” IFC and the Equator Principles
• Both: focus outside narrowly specified risks related to air, water, and soil pollution, but differ in scale – community vs. national, practical vs. “aspirational.”
Struggle for Hearts & Minds
• Chinese direct investment: escape IFC performance standards, placing non-Chinese companies at competitive disadvantage; regulatory approach needed.
• But CSDH/strategic level discourse is “aspirational”, complex, difficult to implement and act on?
• Country level: what is possible/desirable? The aspirational or the practical?
• Effects on training of specialists, practitioners, and policymakers
Case Study: “Minegolia”• Mongolia: “The Asian
Eldorado”– Rapid scale-up of mining
activities– “World class” deposits of
copper, coal, gold, fluorspar, uranium
• Metallic mineral exports 78% of total exports– Ranks 4th in world in
dependence on mineral exports income
– Propelling, “one of the most dramatic transformations in human history” – Susan Wacaster, US Geological Survey
“Ninja” miners, central Mongolia
Mongolia Work• May 2009: International conference in Ulaanbaatar
– Major concerns raised regarding unregulated development, poor community consultation
• 2010-2011: CIHR supports knowledge translation (KT) “catalyst” project to develop HIA knowledge and tools in Mongolian resource sector
• 2010-2011: External assessment of Rio Tinto’s HIA of their Gobi (Oyu Tolgoi) project (IFC PS)
• 2011-2014: CIHR continues KT & dissemination support
• 2015: DFATD/CIHR support of intensive HIA training
Outcomes
• Broad engagement of large and diverse stakeholder groups
• Developed and practiced applying equity-based HIA tools
• *Some* appreciation of the CSDH
• Social and health impacts added to 2012 revisions to the EIA law
• Creation of HIA office in the MOH
Challenges and Debates
• Conflation of industrial hygiene approach with broader public health approach– Hegemony of “Soviet science”
• Also highly gendered
– Little interdisciplinary engagement (little to no social science)
• Research• Policy
– Disciplinary barriers reinforced by major US players
Concluding Questions• Considerable achievements! But
remaining conflicts and debates– Ontological, epistemological,
public/private sector responsibilities,
• Q: Is it possible to endorse IFC/EP approach w/o abandoning strategic-level CSDH perspective?
• Public and private sector conflicts
• Project-specific vs. strategic level focus
• How to push disciplinary boundaries?
Acknowledgments: the “Core” Team
Tsogtbaatar Byambaa: Director, Public Health Institute
Tserendorjiin Sodnompil: Former State Secretary, Mongolia MOH (ret.)Oyun Lkhagvasuren: SFU-FHS PhD candidate & Director, Leading Researchers (health research NGO) MongoliaColleen Davison: Ass’t Professor, Queen’s U.-Public Health & Emergency MedicineMeghan Wagler, SFU-FHS PhD candidate
Michaela Pfeiffer, Technical Officer, Department of Public Health and Environment, WHO Geneva