OPINION: Anglo American CEO's promise should be kept

Published on May 5th, 2010

By BOBBY ANDREW AND GEORGE WILSON

Among our Alaska Native tribes, a promise made is a promise kept. For generations, survival in the Far North depended on this trust.

Such promises over the generations have kept our populations of wild sockeye salmon, which sustain our culture and feed our families, plentiful and healthy.

Last year, Cynthia Carroll, the CEO of London-based mining giant Anglo American, gave Alaskans a promise.

In a private meeting with Alaskans in London, including one of this piece's authors, Carroll promised that her company would not build its proposed Pebble gold and copper mine if local residents didn't support it.

She echoed that private agreement in an interview with the Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin: "We will not go where communities are against us," she said.

We intended to travel to London last month to make sure Ms. Carroll keeps her promise and upholds the principles she says Anglo American exemplifies and practices. However, volcanic ash spewed from an Icelandic volcano dashed that plan.

Still, not even a volcano can stop us from holding Anglo American and its CEO to their promises.

That's because the vast majority of Bristol Bay Natives, joined by commercial and sport fishing industries, have all come out in opposition to Anglo American's proposed Pebble open-pit copper and gold mine project in the headwaters of Bristol Bay spawning ground for the most valuable wild sockeye salmon on earth.

Presentations made by the company and its water rights applications make clear that the mine will be the largest of its kind in North America and one of the largest in the world. If built, the mine will destroy salmon-spawning habitat and degrade this region permanently.

It's no wonder then that the most in-depth survey of local Alaska Natives' opinion on the Pebble mine, found that 80 percent of the survey's respondents oppose the mine and believe it would damage Bristol Bay's wild salmon fishery. Shortly after the poll was released last year, the Bristol Bay Native Corp., after careful consideration, passed a resolution of opposition to the proposed Pebble mine.

It was a resounding echo of the strong and powerful opposition that Anglo American's Ms. Carroll has long stated she would respect.

Yet the Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), the on-the-ground group owned by Anglo American and Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., continues to push the project forward.

Instead of respecting the will of the people, PLP highlights the handful of supporters it has in the region, some of whom are on the company's payroll, to mislead the public into the thinking our communities are divided. They are not.

A year ago, Ms. Carroll made a promise to us.

Ms. Carroll has had ample opportunity to make good on that promise. The public sentiment she claims to respect is clear. But Anglo American has remained silent and its subordinates keep pushing the Pebble mine project forward.

We wanted to make a second journey to London to remind Ms. Carroll, Anglo American and its investors at the company's annual meeting on April 22 of what's at stake. For us, it's timeless culture that is inseparable from this special place on earth.

For Anglo American and Ms. Carroll, it's integrity.

The promises we make or break can leave consequences for generations. It's long past time for Ms. Carroll to follow through on hers.

Bobby Andrew, a lifelong subsistence hunter and fisherman, is spokesman for Nunamta Aulukestai, (Caretakers of our Land), an association of eight Alaska Native village corporations in Bristol Bay. George Wilson, a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman for more than 30 years, is a director of Levelock Village Corp.