Jamaica's bauxite problem

I’m subscribed to a VHS upload channel on YouTube and this was published a few months ago. It’s a short educational documentary on bauxite mining in Jamaica and how it causes problems for landowners and villagers.

I have Jamaican heritage on my mother’s side so this resonated with me, especially because I had no idea this had been happening for so many decades. After some more digging (no pun intended), I came across an article called Problems with the Bauxite-Alumina Industry in Jamaica, published by London Mining Network. It outlined a brief history of bauxite mining on the island and the serious environmental issues it has caused:

Although the bauxite/alumina industry has produced foreign exchange earnings and a number of jobs, it has always been an environmental disaster, removing forest cover, disturbing and polluting waterways, displacing residents, destroying agricultural livelihoods, compromising air and water quality and thus damaging the health and well-being of thousands of Jamaicans. Large areas of good farmland have been torn up, replaced after mining with a thin layer of top-soil that is barely fertile. Whole communities have been displaced, or compromised, with very limited or no compensation for lost land or dust nuisance. Jamaica Environmental Trust (JET) is currently doing a study on this as it is a major problem. In Gibraltar, St. Ann, mining has taken place right up to the boundary of the local school.

Thanks to the Bayer process, which refines bauxite into alumina, Jamaica has a number of “red-mud lakes” containing caustic soda, a key element of the process. In 2023, a bauxite mining and alumina production company called Jamalco claimed to have contained a leak of this toxic substance in Clarendon.

Another downside to all this mining is the remaining land can’t grow much if anything afterwards. British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto has tried to reverse much of this activity, particularly on their Mount Rosser mining site which went from barren red wasteland to greenery in 5 years. Good to see but a small price to repay for all the other issues caused (and a drop in the ocean compared to the company’s extensive controversies list on Wikipedia, including poor working conditions, racism, violence, bullying, and sexual harassment).