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Business Daily: Greenland's Feeling for the Future

07/01/2014

Greenland's Feeling for the Future

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Greenland's Feeling for the Future

Greenland looks ahead and faces a choice - environmental protection vs economic growth

Can Greenland protect its unique envirnonment against its ambition of economic growth via the mining sector?

Greenland faces some tough choices in managing its economic future. The world's largest island is a resource hotspot with vast mineral reserves offering huge potential for the country's mining sector - most significantly uranium mining. But with large scale mining comes considerable environmental risk to a country for which the environment, is also a precious economic and cultural resource. As Greenland gets ready to welcome its first large scale, foreign mining operation, we hear from the people of Greenland about their hopes for the future and their concerns about what lies ahead. And we speak to the country's Prime Minister Aleqa Hammond, a strong believer in the need for her country to embrace foreign mining development in order to meet its economic potential. 

We hear about Botswana, another nation in which mining has and is playing a huge economic role. Botswana's main export is diamonds. Shelia Khama used to run the Botswana operations for the world's biggest diamond company, De Beers. She is now the Director of the African Natural Resources Center at the Africa Development Bank. So what advice does she have for Aleqa Hammond and for Greenland?  You can find more of James Fletcher's report from Greenland at:  bbcworldservice.com/assignment

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