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Dear Editor, The press release from G Mining Ventures Corp issued from their Canadian Office on the commencement of full-scale construction of the Oko West area in Guyana is not a milestone; it is a death warrant for a vast and irreplaceable tract of our hinterlands. Wrapped in the corporate-speak of “progress” and “disciplined execution,” this project represents a catastrophic failure of environmental stewardship, failure of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), failure of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and a blatant disregard for the long-term well-being of the nation in favour of short-term, foreign-extracted profit. But all of this is being encouraged by the PPP. Why are Amerindians voting for the PPP again? For their own self destruction. Is this called the Stockholm Syndrome? To call this a “fully permitted” project is not a justification; it is an indictment. It reveals that our regulatory bodies (the EPA and the GGMC), have become mere rubber stamps for foreign corporate agendas. The issuance of Environmental Permit No. 20230912-RGIGM is not a shield of legitimacy but a certificate of surrender, signing away a fragile ecosystem for the promise of gold, that will all be taken overseas to benefit another country; not Guyana. Let us be brutally clear about what this “construction” entails: 1. The Violence of “Progress”: The company boasts of “100% mass excavation,” “93% clearance” of the barge landing, and “15% site clearing.” These are sterile terms for the violent reality: the wholesale bulldozing of hundreds of hectares of pristine rainforest. This is not “clearing”; it is the eradication of a complex, living ecosystem—a biodiversity hotspot that has been millennia in the making, now being flattened in a matter of months. Every “km of external road” is a scar that fragments wildlife corridors and opens previously inaccessible areas to further exploitation. 2. The Poisoned Legacy: The company’s glossy “Environmental and Social Management System” is a textbook example of greenwashing. No management plan can mitigate the fundamental, permanent damage of an open-pit gold mine. The use of cyanide in the leaching process, the creation of a massive tailings storage facility, and the constant threat of acid mine drainage represent a perpetual, toxic time bomb for the region’s water sources. The “completed coffer dam” is the first step in creating a reservoir of poison that will need to be monitored in perpetuity, long after GMIN has taken its profits and departed. 3. The Hollow Promise of Benefits: The touting of a “80% Guyanese workforce” and training for “200 residents” is a cynical attempt to mask the gross imbalance of this exchange. We are trading an eternal, healthy ecosystem for temporary, dangerous jobs. The “comprehensive” social initiatives in education and healthcare are a pittance compared to the irreversible loss of clean water, fertile land, and a sustainable future based on the very forests and rivers being destroyed. There is no budget on Earth that can replant a centuries-old forest or de-poison an aquifer. The “initial capital cost of US$973 million”, which will be spent mainly on foreign-made machines that have to be imported with that cash leaving Guyana, pales in comparison to the incalculable cost of the ecological debt being incurred and that will be a permanent burden for the people of Guyana. This is not development; it is a liquidation. We are selling off our natural capital—our nation’s lungs and lifeblood—for a fleeting commodity. I condemn this project in the strongest possible terms. I condemn President Irfaan Ali for his lack of leadership on this matter and for allowing his government to be complicit in this ecological plunder. This same President Ali will be belting out tune after tune at the COP Conference on how Guyana is saving the environment for future generation, but we the people know differently and we see the hypocrisy and two-faced double talk. It is under President Ali that the greatest damage has been done to Guyana’s greatest asset; its lungs; its forest. The true cost of Oko West will not be measured in ounces of gold, but in the silenced forests, the contaminated rivers, injured people, animals and fishes and the stolen future of generations to come. This is a bitter day for Guyana. Yours faithfully, Lancelot Hyman
