No turning Kazakhstan into a lifeless desert due to the activities of Western companies!

Below is the text of the joint declaration proposed by the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan to the Communist and Workers’ Parties (Solidnet).

The Communist and Workers’ parties note that in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, French, British and American companies are seizing rare earth metal deposits. Memoranda on granting mining rights were signed at the «EU–Central Asia» and «Italy–Central Asia» summits.

This will have huge consequences for the environment, agriculture and local peoples, as it will actually lead to the destruction of vast lands that will not be subject to reclamation, as well as poisoning of groundwater in a situation of desertification and radioactive contamination of the area, since these elements are extracted together with radiation cesium and thorium.

An example is the disaster in the Caspian Sea, where artificial islands were created in the Northeastern part of the sea as a result of the activities of American and European companies within the NCOC consortium, underwater channels were dug, which raised 20 million tons of soil and caused oil and hydrogen sulfide leaks, which have already killed 90% of the biomass, and the shores They are littered with corpses of dead seals, dead fish and seagulls.

The predatory colonial nature of subsurface exploitation is compounded by the fact that 98% of the profits under the production sharing agreement from oil production on the Caspian shelf go to Western companies belonging to NCOC, such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Eni and others.

Now, in the issue of mining rare earth metals important for the production of weapons, Brussels, Paris and London are replacing their lost lithium deposits in West Africa, creating a new raw material base from Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

As a result of unequal treaties, Kazakhstan is also losing its sovereignty in the energy sector. For example, French nuclear power plant construction technologies are being imposed. Thus, as a result of the allocation of 200 million euros as a grant to the Government of Kazakhstan for the development of hydraulic structures on Lake Balkhash, France is actually establishing control over water resources in a particular reservoir on the shores of which the first nuclear power plant will be built.

This direct seizure of the wealth and resources of Kazakhstan and Central Asia is an imperialist policy of neo-colonialism. Such a strategy leads to increased competition between the capitalist powers for the resources of the region and to the redistribution of countries into spheres of influence.

In this regard, we oppose the transformation of Kazakhstan and the region as a whole into a lifeless desert as a result of the extraction of rare earth metals and the imposition of expensive “green technologies” in the energy sector by the EU and France on local authorities, which turn out to be several times more expensive than traditional ones.

We demand the termination of bonded production sharing agreements and subsurface use contracts and an investigation into the environmental disaster in the Caspian Sea caused by the activities of American and European companies.

SolidNet Parties signing the Joint Statement