One of the things that I have noticed in my burgeoning career as a scholar in this area, is a general lack of language here in the United States that discusses BHR issues with human rights language, even when they clearly implicate international norms and human rights treaties.
However, there are always exceptions.
Writing in an OVEC newsletter in February 1998, Ronald Goodman (a former OVEC board member who has since passed) discussed the issue of surface mining as a human rights related issue.
Goodman took a pretty strong stance on what he and others have called mountain top removal. Goodman advocated for a complete ban of the practice, calling it “ecocide” and saying that the practice was devastating the West Virginia ecosystem. However, Goodman went further and discussed the impact of mountain top removal from a human point of view. Specifically, Goodman said this:
“The terrain and the beauty of the terrain are part of the “skin,” a portion of the essential identity of our mountain people. This extension of their social, economic and psychological existence is being amputated, blasted and scraped away by mining technology. The effects on the human residents are similar to those of warfare on civilians. Many people are disoriented, traumatized, fearful and angry. Many residents have moved away, not simply to find jobs elsewhere, but because their “commons”, their “homeplace,” their homeland is being destroyed. ... This is a great wrong according to the United Nations’ universal declaration of human rights.” (emphasis mine)
Goodman did not elaborate on this point – he did not discuss what specific “wrongs” (of those he discussed earlier) triggered violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, some of the accusations that Goodman laid out above seem to evoke this feeling from the Declaration’s preamble “Whereas recognition of the* inherent dignity* and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world ?”
In essence, Goodman’s charges contradict the notion that the people who live in the mountains in West Virginia were able to live their lives in dignity. His analogy that West Virginians may feel the same way that civilians feel in the wake of warfare also serves to bring the message home – recall that, at the time, Americans were aware of the warfare happening in places like Kosovo (and violence had recently ended in Rwanda) – events that freely led people to discuss human rights issues and use words like genocide. Goodman’s use of language – both in terms of the use of “ecocide” and his explicitly bringing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a brilliant piece of advocacy that was way ahead of its time.
In fact, it is only now, fifteen years later, that the issue of mountaintop removal is being discussed here in West Virginia in the language of human rights. Last week, I blogged about how members of the U.N.’s Working Group for Business and Human Rights visited our state to undertake an examination of surface mining from a human rights point of view. On that day, Mr. Goodman’s words came full circle.
It’s a shame that he didn’t live to see it happen.
Aerial shot courtesy of Southwings.org
Mountain shot (from it’s base) courtesy of Vivian Stockman
