Economically Beneficial ??

There are several ecological concerns about possible uranium exploration and mining near Kapan and in other areas of Armenia. Among the threats related to uranium mining are health hazards and unrecoverable environmental damage:  which cannot be justified by any short-term benefits.

Those supporting the project find it to be economically beneficial for Armenia. But is it ? History shows that any sort of mining brings profits in the short term but what it will bring in the longer term depends on first, how those resources are spent and second, weather they have unrecoverable consequences that might rise in the future. Given the current corruption level the benefits are doubtful and the right question would be: is it fair to trade the clean environment and health of future generations with the profit WE will get today by mining?

Talking about our future, let us have a look at  National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia Website (http://www.cf.am/ ).  We'll see that the four strategic areas for economic development Armenia’s competitive advantage are   Education, Healthcare, Tourism, Networks. Thus it is important to concentrate efforts on development of Human Resources and nature protection in Armenia. However, developing mining activities in Syunik  does not contribute to this strategy. Moreover, it undermines possible successful development of the region, as well as the whole country by damaging the ecology, the people's health, lowering the quality of life and endangering tourism. And these all to be sacrificed just for additional one thousand work places ? In mining sector ?!

We believe that the time has come to start  THINKING LONG-TERM and to  understand, that strategy is about trade-offs:  We just CAN'T  have uranium mine there, where We want to develop tourism (and tourism where we want to develop  uranium mine J ).

You might call us dreamers but we really hope that the current state of our country and capabilities of our human resources are not that bad for us to start, simply, trading our soil for bread and Armenia still has a chance …