- A bauxite mine run by Chinese corporation Chinalco could begin operating next year, endangering a 280,000-hectare (about 692,000 acres) area of western Suriname inhabited by Indigenous communities.
- The mine will require refurbishing and expanding infrastructure for a harbor and railroad built in the 1970s, and gives the company “priority right” to use the Corantijn river for dredging.
- Indigenous groups said they weren’t properly consulted about the project and that the government is unfairly labeling their territory as public domain.
Plans for a major mining project in western Suriname have sounded alarms in nearby Indigenous communities, who say that the project will destroy local ecosystems, violate their land rights and encroach on their traditional ways of life.
A bauxite mine run by Chinese corporation Chinalco could begin operating in 2026, with first construction work planned for the middle of this year. The scale of the project has worried activists, who say the government is prioritizing the economy over the rights of its citizens.
“There’s nothing wrong with looking to improve infrastructure. There’s nothing wrong with looking to bring jobs — that’s absolutely great,” John Goedschalk, head of Climate Change Advisory Services, a climate and conservation consulting group, told Mongabay. “But let’s do it right. Let’s do it in a way that doesn’t take away the rights of people to live where they live.”
If approved by parliament, the 30-year project will allow Chinalco to produce around 6 million tons of bauxite annually on a 280,000-hectare (691,895-acre) site. The mineral is used in the production of aluminum and has been a cornerstone of Suriname’s economy for decades.
The mine, located near the village of Bakhuis, will require refurbishing and expanding infrastructure for a harbor and railroad built in the 1970s, and gives the company “priority right” to use the Corantijn river for dredging, a process involving the removal of riverbed sediment. The company also has first rights to any other minerals found in the area.
The government has 13% equity in the company and will receive as much as 6% in royalties, amounting to billions of dollars in revenue, officials predict.
Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese company, operates in twenty countries across the world, including at the Toromocho copper mine in the Junín region of Peru. Chinese companies working in Latin America have been criticized for skirting environmental and human rights regulations while mining and building infrastructure, as well as straddling countries with huge loans that are hard to pay back.
“We have stated explicitly that we were looking for a company that is compliant, that has a good track record, a good history with being compliant with respect to health, safety, environment, local communities,” said Daniel Lachman, head of the Presidential Commission for West-Suriname Bakhuis Development.
Environmental and land rights concerns
A memorandum of understanding was signed by the government and Chinalco in late November 2024, before residents were officially informed of the mine, according to the Association of Indigenous Village Leaders (VIDS), which represents all 51 Indigenous villages in Suriname. Government officials say the consultation process started before the memorandum of understanding but accelerated once it was signed because the terms of the project were clearer.
VIDS said the timeline violates their rights to be consulted about the project, which should only go forward once officials have requested “free, prior and informed consent.” Activists said there is nothing “free” or “prior” about signing a memorandum of understanding while still carrying out a consultation or waiting on a parliament vote.
“It means doing it prior — so prior to any type of commitment,” Goedschalk said of the consultation process.
“As soon as parliament’s approved it, you’ve created soft pressure,” he added. “Because now for any community member to go against it, they’re going against parliament and they’re going against the government. Do you know how that feels if you’re living in the village and your employer is the government and you have childcare payments coming from the government?”
Chinalco couldn’t be reached for comment for this story.
Attorney General Garcia Parasingh sent a letter to several ministers — including natural resources, agriculture, and forest management — urging them to take the “necessary steps” to prevent the country from being damaged by the mining project.
Last month, village leaders sent a letter to President Chan Santokhi asking for open dialogue and that the project be “put on hold” until a consultation process could be carried out. They haven’t received a response, according to one VIDS member who spoke to Mongabay.
“The Chinalco agreement is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back,” said VIDs Chairman Muriel Fernandes in another letter to the president last month, citing numerous other projects in the country that are also going forward on ancestral land.
Suriname is the only country in South America that hasn’t formally recognized Indigenous peoples’ ancestral land rights, which creates outrage and confusion when the government tries to develop logging, mining or agribusiness projects. In recent years, VIDS and other Indigenous advocacy groups have filed legal petitions and marched to protect the Amazon Rainforest, which covers approximately 93% of the country.
In 2007, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights told Suriname to grant ancestral rights to Indigenous and tribal communities, but the land is still being demarcated.
Last year, controversy surrounding a massive agribusiness project led to a court ruling that Indigenous and tribal communities had to be consulted before their land can be developed by a third party.
Now, VIDS is citing the ruling in one of its letters to the president, and could file an injunction to stop the project should parliament approve it next month.
“We stand on our international rights as Indigenous peoples, including our right to self-determination, our right to free, prior and informed consent, our collective property rights to our ancestral homes and habitats and our right to our own traditional authority and self-appointed representatives,” they said in the letter.
Banner image: The Gunsi River in Suriname. Photo via Wikimedia.
See related from this reporter:
Indigenous communities sidelined for Suriname’s new carbon credit program, critics say
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