Coltan: A Bloody Mineral

Coltan is an essential mineral  for the manufacture of certain electronic components. Without them, our beloved gadgets would not exist. However, the mining of coltan has condemned more or less directly, to millions of people to death. How far it is ethically correct to get carried away by consumerism, to enjoy our computers, phones and other electronic junk?

There is a component that is part of almost every imaginable electronic circuits: tantalum capacitors, a popular variation of an ordinary condenser. If you  disarm  your computer, GPS receiver, cell phone, netbook, media player or any other gadget you have at hand probably find a few of these  inside. In fact, they have become an almost indispensable piece in the manufacture of electronic equipment.

The tantalum is obtained from a mineral called coltan, which is a more or less proportionate mixture of columbite and tantalite. Tantalum has some physical properties such as heat resistance and some unique electrical properties that make it particularly good for making  electrolytic capacitors. Almost all manufacturers need for tantalum  was supplied by Australia. But in recent years, it is  know that the Democratic Republic of Congo has 80% of the estimated world reserves of this mineral.
Coltan is often extracted by children.

However, contrary to what might seem at first glance, the owning large quantities of coltan has become a disgrace to the Congo. Is that, driven by increasing consumer foot electronic equipment that is experiencing the world, the ore has become so valuable as gold or diamonds. And when there are large amounts of money involved, someone will take the  situation to do business. The first allegations were because of the devastation of national parks in order to mine the  ore;  displacing and threaening wildlife. But then it became suspicious of some more serious issues.

According to reports by international agencies such as Independent Media Center, the export of coltan has funded various political factions of the Congo, a country that fights a series of internal conflicts (the Second Congo War), which has already cost the lives of 4 million people. The smuggling and lack of scruples of some companies engaged in the extraction of the mineral, creates  in a more or less direct way the recent explotion of gadgets that we love; inducing multinationals to get the mineral at any price. This price is not just a monetary cost, but the lives of thousands of people (of all ages, including children) exploited in pursuit of the precious ore and so many who die in the crossfire between the warring sides.

Obviously, it is not easy to find a guilty part in the situation. Nor can we throw away our whole system of communications and data processing overnight, for moral reasons. Stop mining coltan, at least for the moment, would mean a significant delay for advance in science and technology.

We could probably help. This is not about to stop buying things, as some extremists say , but curbing our consumerist impulses. If you just consume what we need, our contribution would have a major impact, not only in this but in the environment.  Do we  need a new cellphone every year? Any ideas?

Here you can watch a documentary called Blood Coltan. It will introduce you to the problematic.

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