Titanium deposits row heats up in Kenya

Titanium deposits row heats up in Kenya

By Sam Aola

MOMBASA, Kenya (AFP): Mineral-rich sands on Kenya's south
coast have provoked an escalating row involving a Canadian mining
company, local residents and environmental pressure groups.

The stakes are high: the Kwale district contains an estimated
12 percent of the world's known titanium ore deposits and is also
home to several thousand farmers who would have to be relocated
if and when excavation begins.

Plans by Tiomin Resources, Inc., of Ontario, Canada, to
exploit the deposits and construct a port to ship out the ore in
a US$120 million project, have faced opposition not only from
residents unhappy with compensation offers but also from Kenyan
marine and wildlife officials as well as local and international
organizations acting under the umbrella of the Mining Rights
Forum.

Tiomin's top official in Kenya, Francoise Goutier, recently
raised the temperature of the row by accusing one of these
organizations, ActionAid, a British charity, of conducting a
"smear campaign" and acting as a front for "British interests."

The opponents "do not have any obvious concern about this
project, maybe apart from the fact that ActionAid might be acting
in vested British interests," Goutier told AFP.

"I do not believe that they are acting on corporate social
responsibility as they claim," the official said.

ActionAid has rejected this charge outright, while the British
High Commission in Nairobi told AFP that no British companies had
expressed any interest in the titanium ore deposits.

"Without redress, the implications of titanium mining, in its
current form, remains a time-bomb and will be a test case for the
principles of community rights, conservation of natural resources
and corporate social responsibility," according to ActionAid's
Irungu Houghton.

"It is not a smear campaign. That is not our intention,"
Elphas Ojiambo, a policy research coordinator with ActionAid,
told AFP.

ActionAid has rejected as "flawed" an environmental assessment
study commissioned by Tiomin and submitted to the Kenyan
government, which has until August to decide whether to allow
extraction to go ahead.

The charity commissioned a second study, carried out by Kenyan
scientists, which suggested that the radioactive levels of
thorium and uranium deposits in the area to be excavated were of
unacceptably high levels.

Fears have also been raised about the effects on marine
ecology of the planned construction at Shimoni, close to the
Tanzanian border, of a freight station and shiploading facility.

According to Kenya Wildlife Service Director Nehemiah Rotich,
the facilities will endanger rare species of flora and fauna at
the nearby Wasini-Kisite and Mpunguti Marine Park.

"The proposed dredging will kill the marine ecosystem. Shimoni
has a very delicate coral reef environment, we shall definitely
object to any plans by Tiomin to put up their port facility", he
told AFP.

The marine park has pleistocene era coral reefs whose
platforms are exposed at low tide. In the nearby Shimoni forest,
which Tiomin plans to clear, 345 bird species and 275 rare plant
species are at risk.

"These allegations are all unfounded as the experts do not
have any supporting facts to prove their case, but all this
opposition to our grand project will fade away as we hold the
cards," Goutier told AFP.

The issue of compensation for the area's residents is also
moot.

According to Goutier, Tiomin has already entered into 21-year
concessionary leases with freeholders who would receive annual
payments based upon acreage, resettlement compensation and
unspecified "assistance in relocation".

But John Nyamai, spokesman for the farming community in the
twin villages of Maumba-Nguluku in Kwale district, disagreed.

"We have resolved among ourselves to turn down their offer
because it is too little, we might be poor but we know the real
value of our land," he said.

The two camps are barely on speaking terms. Although invited,
Tiomin together with government officials failed to turn up at a
conference held by the Mining Rights Forum in Mombasa last month
to discuss the project.