Coltan
Coltan (short for columbite–tantalites and known industrially as tantalite) is a dull black metallic ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted.
[8] Tantalum minerals are mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, Rwanda, Australia, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Kenya.
Potential future mines, in descending order of magnitude, are being explored in Egypt, Greenland, China, Australia, Finland, Canada, Nigeria and Brazil.
In Canada, Tanco Mine near Bernic Lake in Manitoba has tantalum reserves, is the world's largest producer of caesium, and is operated by Global Advanced Metals Pty Ltd. A discussion of Canadian mining by Natural Resources Canada, updated in 2017, does not mention either coltan or tantalum.
[12] A Rwandan official discussing prospective mines in his country said that Canada had 4% of global production in 2009; but in rock so hard that the ore is too expensive to extract.
Technical advisers for the mining project were allegedly provided by a subsidiary of Khatam-al Anbiya Construction Headquarters, a fully owned enterprise of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard which had been under US sanctions since October 25, 2007.
[24] Director of the Colombian Police Oscar Naranjo Trujillo stated in October 2011 that the FARC and the Sinaloa Cartel are working together in the unlicensed coltan mining in Colombia.
[36][37] In 2012, electronics companies that used coltan included Acer Inc., AMP, Apple Inc., Canon Inc., Dell, HP Inc., HTC, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Motorola, Nikon, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Philips, RIM (now Blackberry Limited), Samsung, Sandisk, Sharp Corporation, Sony, and Toshiba.
[40] The increased importance of coltan in electronics "occurred as warlords and armies in the eastern Congo converted artisanal mining operations ... into slave labour regimes to earn hard currency to finance their militias," as one anthropological study put it in 2008.
[41] When much of eastern Congo came under the control of Rwandan forces in the 1990s, Rwanda suddenly became a major exporter of coltan, benefiting from the weakness of the Congolese government.
[42][need quotation to verify] The soaring price "brought in as much as $20 million a month to rebel groups" and other factions trading coltan mined in northeastern Congo, according to a U.N.
[44] The work can be laborious; miners can walk for days into the forest to reach the ore, scratch it from the earth with hand tools, and pan it.
For example, the lack of roads in the Congolese interior makes it extremely difficult to transport produce to market and a harvest can be seized by militias or the military.
[47] A 2003 UN Security Council report[48] stated that much of the ore is mined illegally and smuggled across Congo's eastern border by militias from neighbouring Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.
Austrian journalist Klaus Werner [de] however has documented links between multi-national companies like Bayer and the smuggling and illegal coltan mines.
[50] A United Nations committee investigating the plunder of gems and minerals from the Congo, listed in its final report in 2003[48] approximately 125 companies and individuals whose business activities breach international norms.
A UN panel estimated that the Coltan extraction causes problems that adjoin or overlap those caused by blood diamonds and uses similar methods such as smuggling across the porous Rwandan border, environmentalists and human rights workers began to speak of "conflict minerals" or "conflict resources" more generally.
It is difficult to verify the sourcing of fungible materials like ores, so some processors, Cabot Corporation (USA) for example, have announced that they would avoid unsourced Central African coltan altogether.
An offshore consortium registered in the British Virgin Islands named Nova Dies controlled most of the trans-Balkan trade route.
The Balkan trade route, therefore, poses a long-term threat to the DRC's economy; it finances and validates the vast harm done to DR Congo by the violent and corrupt past and current system.
Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted from 2014 to 2016 with coltan buyers operating in Bukama Territory, Kalemie and Lubumbashi, Katanga Province, one researcher suggested that conflict mineral reforms resulted in better oversight and organization of supply chains, but that inaction by the Congolese government had led to locally negotiated solutions and territorialization, leading to secretive mining activities.
[68] Uncontrolled mining in the DRC causes soil erosion and pollutes lakes and rivers, affecting the hydrology and ecology of the region.
Hunted for bushmeat, a prized delicacy in western Africa, and threatened by logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and armed conflict, the gorilla population was critically endangered, they said.
Since the miners said they would cease the practice if they had another food supply, the authors suggested that efforts to stop the gorilla population decline should consider addressing this issue to reduce the depredations of subsistence hunting.
Some of the increased production came from eastern DC where there are "rebel groups and unscrupulous business people" forcing farmers and their families to leave land where the rebels wanted to mine, "forcing them to work in artisanal mines...widespread destruction of agriculture and devastating social effects occurred, which in a number of instances were akin to slavery."
