EcoLur
The football field in Shnogh Village is full of timber, all in all 4,500 cubic meters. This is Teghout Forest cut down recently for the development of Teghout copper and molybdenum mine. This sight is not for nervous people. You can eyewitness how large pieces of forest landscape disappear from the geographic map, instead bare building grounds appear full of concrete structures. Many unique natural objects are already in the past, for example, Kharatadzor Gorge. Look and remember, as the gorge has already been covered with a concrete dam. Tomorrow we won’t have this forest, this gorge and the brook flowing through the gorge. There will be a tailing dump, which, under the project, must be filled with wastes up to 200 mln cubic meters, and a concrete canal instead of the brook. (See photos).
One cannot imagine how tree-planting will replace the centuries-long and sustainable ecosystem. The Teghout project is an unprecedented case when 357 ha of forest must be cut down according to the official plan in forest-poor Armenia after the energy crisis in 1992-1995. гг. Under independent expert assessment, the Teghout project infrastructure development including the mine, the site for dumps, a ore-processing factory, a tailing dump and storehouses in the territory of 1400 ha will bring to deforestation in the whole territory and forest ecosystem degradation in neighboring territories.
The company is in a hurry though it sill doesn’t have any investments. Negotiations have been running with the Russian VTB Bank, while the public proposes not to make any social payments in this bank because of Teghout.
What does ACP Company offer instead? First of all, working places. “Still we have 320 people employed from both villages (Teghout and Shnogh). Sure people from other villages also work here. If we need an excavator operator, we would employ a local, but there are no excavator operators among locals,” ACP Director Ruben Papoyan explains the situation, “when we open the mine, we’ll have new working places, up to 1400.” Under him, the company compensates deforestation through tree planting up to 714 ha. As a matter of fact, that’s all. The company already doesn’t speak about budget additions, as it’s unknown what financing they will receive for Teghout project development. They are obviously short of own funds. Negotiations with the Russian VTB Bank have been running for two years already. Unaware of what’s going on behind closed doors, one thing is evident: the VTB hasn’t granted any loan so far. Besides, public opposition to Teghout project, ACP Company and the government permitted this illegal program, financial institutions, rather nervous discussion of this project in European frameowrks, on-going court proceedings, all this can play a role in wrecking the deal.
Nevertheless, the tree felling in Teghhout is in progress. The project infrastructure development is performed in the most beautiful and virgin areas where loggers didn’t get in before laying the road.
“Here agriculture comes into conflict with mining industry. If agriculture were well developed, taking it away would be difficult. But no one is developing agriculture, that’s why they are taking away the territories,” said Shnogh Villager Lyova Alikhanyan who launched a legal proceedings with ACP Company because of his own territory. Under the government decision that recognized a private company’ interests as a priority, the Teghout project seized 81,483 ha of land from Shnogh and Teghout villages. “Who is this interest a priority for? Yes, now people will have work, let’s say for 20 years, but what then?” Alikhanyan said.
So far Lyova Alikhanyan and several other villagers didn’t agree to give away their land areas for the Teghout project. On one hand, the compensation set by the company is too low: 10-15 cents for one square meter. On the other hand, though the company promised to open working places and to employ all villagers, it’s still unclear what to do with people left without land but not employed by the company. “My land areas are high, so some years will be needed to reach them, so I’ll be using them,” he said. What then?
“You know you always can find people who will support the company; they say everything will be O.K. But in the 80’s, when guns were forbidden and opposing to authorities may cost you 20-year imprisonment, the people rebelled and won. Time will come and we’ll think what to do.”
August 09, 2010