International solidarity for saving Roşia Montană now needed!

Europe’s largest open-pit gold and silver exploitation project using 12.000 tones of cyanide per year for a period of 16 years might threaten the oldest documented mining settlement in Romania.

CubicMetre – Resources for Culture supports “Save Roşia Montană” campaign, initiated by Romanian NGO Alburnus Maior in 2002 and joined, since then, by many people and organisations in an attempt to stop a huge cyanide-based mining project endangering Roşia Montană’s unique heritage and to include the Transylvanian village area on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Roşia Montană, selected this year among Europe’s 7 Most Endangered Monuments and Sites by Europa Nostra and the European Investment Bank Institute is now again in international focus after the Romanian government asked the Parliament, on 27 August this year, to adopt a special law proposal allowing a mining company to start there Europe’s biggest cyanide-based gold and silver mine. The law proposal received negative feedback from the Ministry of Justice, on grounds of having unconstitutional elements, and caused thousands of people to protest against it in the streets, both in the country and abroad. Since 1 September the protesters have been voicing their concerns about the threat of this draft legislation on the rule of law in Romania, about the negative impact of this project on the environment, on the natural and cultural heritage there and on the local community’s way of life. The current legislative proposal is under debate in the Parliament this September.

A few news articles in the foreign press about the protests:
France 24
Euronews
The Guardian
Le monde
CNN

“Save Roşia Montană” campaign supporters, including CubicMetre Association, call for an alternative and sustainable solution, a long-term social and economic development plan based on the preservation and development of Roşia Montană’s unique assets: the mining landscape with its cultural and natural heritage. Following a local political decision, Roşia Montană is, despite its huge cultural and touristic potential, classified as a monoindustrial area, making any activity other than mining legally impossible there. We believe Roşia Montană should be allowed to have a fair chance for growth beyond mining and based on its inexhaustible human resource, cultural and natural richness.

CubicMetre Association, advocating by its mission for the rule of law, for good governance, debate and participatory design in creating strategies, policies and legislation, joins Roşia Montană supporters and asks the Parliament to reject the current law proposal and to further ban the use of cyanide in mining; the central and local authorities to urgently create the context for a genuine debate and for implementing concrete solutions for Roşia Montană’s sustainable development and to support the introduction of Roşia Montană on UNESCO World Heritage List.

Appeal for international solidarity for Roşia Montană!
If you decide to support “Save Roşia Montană” campaign, here are a few suggestions of how you can contribute:

sign the petition to reject the law proposal and cyanide mining in Roşia Montană and raise awareness in your countries about this situation and about similar ones with environmental, social and cultural hazards you might know of
download the campaign visual materials and disseminate them through your communication channels (you can find these materials on this page)
subscribe to Roșia Montană in UNESCO World Heritage on Facebook, to stay in touch with the campaign’s events
contact Alburnus Maior Association for investigating together more applied advocacy strategies.

To start the actual mining exploitation project, 4 mountains in the Roşia Montană area would need to be blown up (Cetate, Cârnic, Orlea and Jig), creating a crater with a diameter of 8 kilometers. Two of these mountains, Cârnic and Orlea, are historical monuments. Cârnic contains, according to researches to date, the most significant ensemble of mining exploitation elements from the Roman era in former Alburnus Maior, today’s Roșia Montană. The exploitation project would use 12.000 tones of cyanide/ year for 16 years, leaving behind a 363-hectare lake of cyanide waste (185 m high), degradable in about 120 years, according to the Geological Institute of Romania. To point out only some of the potential negative aspects caused by this mining project: around 960 families from 4 villages would be expropriated and would have to leave Roșia Montană (some of them already left), up to 1000 houses – of which 41 are heritage houses – and 7 churches would be demolished, 11 graveyards would be relocated, 7 kilometers of Roman and pre-Roman galleries, 80 kilometers of galleries dating from the medieval and modern times would be destroyed. After the 16 years of exploitation, 880 local people employed through the project would have no further work options in the area and could be faced with reduced chances of retraining and with difficulties in adjusting to a different life setting elsewhere, due to the unsustainable character of this type of project. Following the destruction caused by the daily detonations and the huge quantities of cyanide-based works, the whole landscape itself would be terra deserta, unable to regenerate and support any other activity for a few hundred years.

Roşia Montană, the oldest documented mining settlement in Romania (about 1870 years old), has a great cultural significance at national and international level, given by the superposition and interconnection of the vestiges of underground mining networks dating from Roman, medieval and modern times, complemented by a rich surface landscape consisting in vestiges of mining (gallery entrances, pathways, small vegetated waste piles, water reservoirs) and the mining town, all set against a spectacular natural background. Among the most important vestiges from Roşia Montană are the Roman wax tablets known for their importance in the history of universal law, providing detailed information on the economic realities, the housing system, the religious life and legal relations that governed the local mining community.

Your support in “Save Roşia Montană” campaign is more than welcome, appreciated and needed now!

Among many other entities and experts in fields as varied as geology, cultural heritage, sustainable growth, economics, environmental matters, The Romanian Academy, ICOMOS – Romanian National Committee, Pro Patrimonio Foundation, ARA Association – Architecture. Restoration. Archeology , OAR – Order of Architects in Romania, UAR – Union of Architects in Romania officially declared themselves against the mining project and joined the ”Save Roșia Montană” campaign.

About the campaign on Alburnus Maior Association’s website and on Facebook
About Roşia Montană and Europe’s 7 Most Endangered Monuments and Sites initiative
”Roşia Montană: An Overview on the Question of Cultural Heritage”
About Roşia Montană, its sustainable development and the issues raised by the current cyanide-based mining project: “Roşia Montană in the European debate (anthology)”

Photo credit: Observatorul urban

About the Author

MetruCub MetruCub – resurse pentru cultură este o asociaţie înfiinţată în anul 2012 cu scopul de a funcţiona ca o platformă de întâlnire, dezbatere şi expertiză pentru profesioniştii din domeniul cultural – artistic. MetruCub îşi propune să exploreze, să sprijine şi să dezvolte sectorul cultural prin studii de specialitate, prin proiecte interdisciplinare şi prin crearea unui context în care artişti, operatori culturali, cercetători şi autorităţi să se poată întâlni şi comunica. Credem în rolul important al artei şi culturii în dezvoltarea fiecărui individ şi a societăţii în ansamblu şi pledăm pentru un management cultural profesionist şi o fundamentare obiectivă şi democratică a politicilor ce vizează domeniul cultural.