Large-scale resource extraction exacerbates the threat of COVID-19 across the American hemisphere, especially for Indigenous peoples – Kairos
May. 4th, 2020
Across Abya Yala and Turtle Island, territories otherwise known as America, governmental and corporate responses to and amid the spread of the novel coronavirus have put into sharp focus the crisis of the status quo. This is especially true of large-scale resource extraction. The grave threat posed by COVID-19 across the American hemisphere, especially to Indigenous peoples, is exacerbated by extractivism and many Indigenous communities are demanding that extractive operations cease immediately across the hemisphere given their potential to magnify the spread and effects of the coronavirus.
Yet, deemed an essential service by governments, the extractive industry continues mostly unencumbered by the public health measures imposed on other industries and a large majority of the world’s population to contain the pandemic. The extractive sector is endangering its workforce as well as the lives of communities, many of them Indigenous, who live near project sites. As MiningWatch Canada outlines in the statement “COVID-19: Mining Companies Putting Workers and Communities at Greater Risk,” extractive operations, especially mining, facilitate the spread of the coronavirus. The transitory and confined nature of mine labour, the distance of project sites from medical facilities, and the limited access to public health services, and often to clean water, in Indigenous communities create ideal conditions for the proliferation of COVID-19.
