Guillermo Otano, from the Spanish NGO Alboan, has been appointed by Franck Janin SJ as the new head of the Justice in Mining Jesuit Network. The network began many years ago in Ranchi, in India, and since expanded all over the world.

Dr Otano, Which are your priorities as a new coordinator of Justice in Mining?

It is a tricky question since networking is not about pushing for individual priorities but achieving shared goals. The latter has not always been easy in the case of Justice in Mining. On the one hand, due to the geographical distance and the internal diversity of the network, as we have members from each Jesuit Conference who speak different languages and come from very different cultural backgrounds. On the other, the fact that, even though most mining conflicts have global roots, the struggles are often local, meaning that the challenges faced by each member organisation are context dependent.  

Nonetheless, over the last decade, the network has managed to build up a shared purpose and a collective identity around the idea of “Ignatian advocacy”. The real challenge for the coming years, in my view, is to strengthen our ability to work together, connecting the local struggles with the global dynamics that lay behind them. We need to collaborate in order to stop the criminalisation of human rights defenders and those who defend our “Common Home”; to speak out against the unethical behaviour of companies and governments involved in mining projects; and to open a public conversation about the environmental degradation produced by mining (specially, regarding the use of water).

These are the three thematic priorities included in the global strategic plan of the Justice in Mining Network for the next four years. While debating and drafting this document, we realised that we have much more potential than we thought, because we know each other much better than we did ten years ago. So, we just need to keep on sharing experiences, building capabilities for advocacy and keeping one eye open to identify those opportunities that allow us to collaborate with each other.

Read the entire interview: http://jesc.eu/a-new-leader-for-justice-in-mining/

Susan Dabbous

Photos:  Social Forum on Mining and Extractivist Economies (Johannesburg, Nov 2018)