Twenty-first International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

In its Toronto Declaration of May 2002, the International Council on Mining and Metals underscored the negative impacts of mining on biodiversity. Paradoxically, owing to their symbiotic relationship, mineral resources exist in all biodiversity hubs. While mining affects biodiversity in multiple spatial scales through landscape devastation and mineral beneficiation activities, they also exacerbate tension between extraction and conservation. In Nigeria and South-Africa whose abundant mineral endowments make them Africa’s mining and biodiversity hubs, biodiversity loss activates the disruption of sources of livelihoods and ecosystem services which cumulatively undergird environmental injustice. Consequently, biodiversity loss leads to violation of human rights to life, health, food, adequate standard of living along with displacement of the people from their cultural moorings. These have dire implications for the realization of Agenda 2030 in both countries having regard to their failure to achieve the Millenium Development Goals. Using the analytical model as methodology, survey of relevant literature and case law as sources of data, this study situates biodiversity loss in the context of human rights and examines the weaknesses of Nigeria’s and South Africa’s mining governance frameworks relative to citizens’ environmental rights. It found that notwithstanding both countries are signatories to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and other environmental instruments, the high incidence of poverty, deficit of political will, and legislative ambivalence undermine the regulatory capacity to hold mining companies accountable and stem the tide of biodiversity loss. The study recommends the mainstreaming of human rights and biodiversity considerations in legislative and land-use planning.