The complex web of contributing causes of conflict in the DRC – mining abuse, geopolitics, corruption, ethnicity – all need to be addressed.
Both the army and remaining rebel groups such as the Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR) are implicated in the illegal mining and abuses - even cooperating at times with each other as well as with the companies to share the spoils.
"In many places, the mining is abused," said Wang Caifeng, the top rare-earths industry regulator at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China.
Interior Secretary Zinke is acting in spite of the fact that a new major player – native American tribes – are weighing in strongly against opening these lands to mining and abuse because many of the areas at risk, like Bears Ears, were created to protect parts of their heritage, culture and religion.
Illustrative of these usages and of the special conditions to be met are cables for use in steel mills and boiler rooms (high temperature), on mobile equipment (vibration and excessive flexing), in chemical plants (corrosion), for submarines and mines (mechanical abuse), near nuclear reactors (high radiation), and on artificial satellites (pressure extremes).
Despite millennia of human soil use (agriculture and forestry) and perceived abuse (mining etc)., most of Europe's soils are on the continental scale more strongly influenced by natural forces (primarily geology/lithology) than by human impact.
The Huntington area is likely to see more population loss in the coming years because of aging and poor health related to coal mining and opioid abuse.
However, Patricia Jurewicz, director of the Responsible Sourcing Network, a nonprofit aimed at ending human rights abuses in mining, said the latest figures paint a different picture.
"Vedanta is a good example of the problems with mining companies, for their abuse of human rights as well as degradation of the environment".
The title "Higher Ground" comes from the places communities flock to escape rising flood waters and is a metaphor for the monumental problems facing the area — drug abuse, strip mining, dwindling populations of young people.
