environmentalist NGOs are set on destroying the prospects of the people of Rosia Montana and undermining democracy itself in Romania

After years of investing in the Rosia Montana goldmine project and ready to go Gabriel Resources the Canadian mining company has been told by the Romanian environmental minister that your papers are not in order come back in a year.

Of course the issue here isn’t the small-print, the project has been ratified by the Romanian government already and tested successfully and extensively in the courts. No, with the democratic arguments won in favour of the project, from parliament to the people (locals overwhelmingly want the mine as local election results show) this is both a bureaucratic and very destructive stalling tactic.

This anti-democratic attempt to block the mine is typical of the methods used by the environmentalists opposing the mine. For example greens living in the machinery of the European Union have been threatening Romania’s ascension setting up the goldmine as “the one particular problem facing Romania”. Additionally, a disinformation campaign targeting US and European liberal opinion has been financed by the shadowy billionaire George Soros - most notably through the film Gold Futures shown on PBS and exposed on this website as a pack of lies.

Going as it were over the heads of the Romanians themselves this campaign has exerted a tremendous pressure on the Romanian government. And it seems that through the person of the environmental minister they have at the eleventh hour struck a blow against the wishes and interests consistently expressed by Romanians.

The environmentalist outlook demonstrated here is that “the planet comes before the people” an ultra-conservative “you mustn’t mess with nature” point of view. For those of us not wedded to the idea of hating humanity it is clear that the democratic wishes so far expressed by the Romanians sensibly acknowledge both the goldmine project’s plans to clean up the heavily polluted local environment and the potential to bring much needed development to a very poor area.

What is so destructive about this delaying tactic is that it undermines the mining company financially (shares dropped over 40% on the news) putting the entire project at risk and it lets the local area go to rot, over the next year Rosia Montana will continue to depopulate losing people with mining experience and generally undermining the community.

Maybe you’ve waited for an hour for a bus – bad enough. Imagine thousands waiting to go to work for an entire year, ostensibly because of some paper work.

And of course if such tactics work once who is to say that they might be deployed again with further costly and morale sapping effects on those people who want to give the future a go.

This delay cannot be brooked – those of us that have any respect for democracy and any belief in people’s transformative ability have to oppose the machinations of these environmentalist cliques.

17 September 2007