Afghanistan Should Learn from Canada Regarding New Mine Development

Many moons ago, I was a young man working for Natural Resources Canada in Ottawa. At that time, we were helping develop two diamond mines (Ekati and Diavik)  in one of the most inhospitable locations on Earth – Canada’s frozen North. Today’s news that there may be massive, unexploited mineral deposits in Afghanistan [LINK] made me think of this. One of the challenges for Afghanistan (according to US officials) is that the country lacks a “mining culture”.

I would argue that our experience with these two mines shows that one can import a “mining culture” into an extremely un-developed area and have it benefit local communities in terms of social and economic development [LINK].

Conversely, there is a risk of Afghanistan ending up like Alberta’s tar sands where the environmental devastation far outweighs the socio-economic benefits. In either case, I think the government of Afghanistan should have a conversation with some senior officials at NRCan and see if there isn’t something we can do to help them. God knows they could use a break at this point.