Bauxite country - St. Ann, Jamaica

Driving from Jamaica's north coast highway / tourism belt to Gibraltar, a community deep in rural Jamaica, to see the effects of bauxite mining in the area. The intrusive open-cast mining has taken place right up to the fence of the local school. A new mining lease was been issued in 2018 which will allow mining on the other side of the road which leads to Gibraltar. Some of that area was released for active mining in January 2022

A few jobs are created but farms and woodland are destroyed, sometimes rehabilitated with a thin layer of top-soil which can only support a poor pasture.

The people I spoke with said they didn't feel any benefit from the mining operations. Compensation for land taken for mining amounts to what can be earned in one year of farming the same land.

The new lease, Special Mining Lease 173, encroaches on Jamaica's Cockpit Country, a protected area with a unique ecological, cultural and living heritage. Several groups have been campaigning to stop mining in the Cockpit Country.

The new