Rosia Montana recognized as one of the most endangered European landmarks

From: European Student Think Tank

In a poten­tially game-changing decision, Europa Nos­tra, the lead­ing European her­it­age organ­iz­a­tion, along­side the European Invest­ment Bank Insti­tute, selec­ted Rosia Montana as one of the “7 Most Endangered Land­marks” in Europe out of 42 can­did­ates from 21 dif­fer­ent coun­tries. The announce­ment was made at a press con­fer­ence on the 12th of June, 2013, in Athens. As Europa Nos­tra skill­fully describes it, Rosia Montana min­ing land­scape, one of the most rep­res­ent­at­ive in Europe, “is ser­i­ously threatened by a large-scale, open-cast gold min­ing pro­ject.” Accord­ing to Gab­riel Resources Ltd., the Cana­dian com­pany behind the scheme, the plan for the pro­ject is to dig up the estim­ated 800-4,000 tons of gold squirreled away in Rosia Montana using an aston­ish­ing amount of 40 tons of cyan­ide per day. Exploit­ing the mine would mean des­troy­ing four for­es­ted mountains, contaminating mul­tiple rivers, dev­ast­at­ing sev­eral fra­gile eco­sys­tems and des­troy­ing over 900 build­ings. It would also require the dam­ming up of one end of the Corna val­ley to hold 250 mil­lion tons of cyanide-laced waste gen­er­ated by the gold leaching.

Rosia Montana’s selec­tion among the most endangered European land­marks not only chal­lenges the constantly-used fal­la­cious inform­a­tion spread by the Cana­dian com­pany and the Romanian gov­ern­ment, which stressed that the Cana­dian pro­ject was the only solu­tion for the area’s devel­op­ment, but also con­demns open-pit min­ing and cyanide-based exploit­a­tion as a devel­op­ment strategy. Instead, Europa Nos­tra will­ingly takes on the Romanian gov­ern­ment and the Cana­dian com­pany and “pro­motes a model of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment based on cul­ture and cul­tural pat­ri­mony, on the inter­ac­tion between devel­op­ment and cul­tural factors.

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