Businesses operating in the oil, gas and mining industries face significant challenges when it comes to managing environmental impacts, and the subsequent effect of these impacts on children’s health. As two recent reports by UNICEF – Children’s Rights in the Mining Sector and the Oil & Gas Scoping Study – have highlighted, children are more vulnerable to health problems created by localised environmental impacts than adults. This is due to a number of factors: children’s progressive and incomplete physical development, the increased likelihood of ingesting pollutants through hand-to-mouth behaviour involved in play, and the fact that children are less able to identify warning signs and hazards.
Mining operations can use large amounts of water – which might deprive communities of access to safe drinking water – while air pollution in the form of dust from increased traffic can cause and exacerbate respiratory conditions.
Problems can occur from mining companies of all sizes, but the worst tend to appear in small-scale and artisanal mines. Karen Hayes, senior director of mines to markets at PACT, a non-governmental organisation working to improve the economic and social prospects of communities around the world, explains.
“Where a large-scale mining company might have some environmental and human rights policies, even if they are not always excellently implemented, there is some degree of accountability there,” she says. “Small-scale miners may be using children directly in mineral exploitation, where there is no environmental or social planning and where the children are directly exposed to issues such as the use of mercury, mining underground, repetitive labour, toxicity and dust.”
When there are pregnant women working in mines, she adds, the impacts on children can begin before they are born. “The mothers may be exposed to toxic substances,” she says. “For instance, mercury is still used extensively in gold mining around the world to capture free gold particles. Mothers may be in direct contact with it, and waste mercury may be poured into drinking water.”
The dangers associated with smaller mines can also have implications for larger organisations, as these operations can occur on land licenced to large-scale mining companies, and the larger companies will sometimes, although not always, buy from the smaller ones.
When it comes to the oil and gas industry, UNICEF’s report notes that knowledge of the specific impacts on children is more limited, but highlights the potential impacts of fracking – water consumption issues, emissions affecting air quality, and possible surface and groundwater contamination. At sites where oil spills occur, leaked materials can be potentially carcinogenic, according to UNICEF’s senior adviser on climate change and environment, Alex Heikens. “This can have major consequences not only for today’s population but for the children of tomorrow and generations that follow,” he says.
A number of events in recent years have illustrated the very real harm that can be done when proper safeguards are not in place. A 2012 report by Human Rights Watch, for example, revealed that at least 400 children have been killed by acute lead poisoning in Nigeria’s Zamfara region since 2010 (with more than 3,500 needing urgent treatment). In 2013, the mining operations of multinational Glencore-Xstrata were found to be the cause of a lead poisoning outbreak among children in Queensland, Australia. In the same year, a study into the impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill noted that more than 40% of parents in high-impact coastal communities said their children had experienced breathing, skin, visual, emotional or behavioural problems since the disaster.
Improving processes
Action is being taken by some businesses to better identify and address how their environmental impacts affect children. Dr Kendyl Salcito, executive director at human rights research and policy organisation Nomogaia, explains: “Some leading companies have started commissioning ongoing health impact assessment studies to monitor their impacts. With periodic studies, companies can detect new health risks as they arise.
“Paladin Energy, a uranium mining company with mines in Namibia and Malawi, has a really strong community relations team in Malawi that does a remarkable job of monitoring health and safety issues for children in an ongoing way, mostly by maintaining an open dialogue with community members, security personnel and health workers.”
Barrick Gold is one of a number of companies that participated in Unicef’s Children’s Rights in the Mining Sector study, to review its human rights impact assessment and integrate a child rights perspective into the process.
In 2012, the company developed an audit tool looking at seven areas of human rights, which is now in use at all its high-risk sites. Jonathan Drimmer, vice president and deputy general counsel at Barrick Gold, says that being part of the study allowed the company to gather “a more holistic view of the impacts of mining on children, much of which has environmental relevance”, and highlighted the need for the company to improve its granular analysis of data collection to bring out the impacts on children.
Drimmer adds that the company looks to continually address the environmental impacts of its operations on communities. “We are always adjusting and tweaking,” he says. “For instance, we might need to change the discharge point to make it more difficult for communities to access, or look to identify, additional natural aquifers to allow for a greater quantity of fresh water. It is always ongoing because you have changes in the community and shifts in production at the site.”
Alongside impact assessments, businesses can take some key steps to improve processes. PACT’s Hayes says that companies should be putting child protection policies in place; ensuring that no person under the age of 18 is employed in operations; prioritising child care, welfare and education in social programmes; communicating their policies to suppliers; and engaging with industry associations and other initiatives that can give guidance and support on child protection issues.
However, there is room for improvement in terms of how many companies are taking action on the issue. UNICEF’s oil and gas study found that many companies focus only on child labour when it comes to children’s rights, rather than on the potential vulnerability of children to the sector’s broader impacts.
While there is more awareness of the issues in mining, Nomogaia’s Salcito says that it can be difficult to pick out leaders in the field because every company appears to have a variety of success in tackling child rights, when its mining portfolio is taken as a whole.
Looking ahead, Michaela Pfeiffer, technical officer at the department of Public Health and Environmental and Social Determinants of Health of the World Health Organisation, says that opening up the conversation is key.
“It is important to have disclosure of information to affected communities, and to provide communities with opportunities to voice concerns and engage with operators and governments. Governments, companies and civil society all have a part to play in dealing with these problems; it needs to be a well-developed system of checks and balances.
“In terms of what part business can play, I think dialogue is really important. It is about creating a dialogue with different stakeholders, and through that, helping everybody understand what they can do and what their value-add is to that circumstance.”
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