The case study “A Life worth More than Gold – Tambogrande”, at Peruvian town, concerns a population of approximate 20,000, living on a crescent of houses which slope from the hill-tops of Tambogrande. The local population relies on the mango and avocado orchards which are enough to sustain their lives for generations to come. Tambogrande hill is a place where most houses and streets are made of dirt. Beneath the lime on the Tambogrande hill, there lie thick deposits of valuable metal, that is, silver and gold on top, and copper and zinc underneath. The mineral deposits are estimated to be worth $1 billion of the mining company in Canada. The mining companies had promised to bring development projects to the local communities in exchange for the mining rights. Nonetheless, when the local residents refused to let mining companies proceed to extract the minerals, Tambogrande was confronted with national themes such as arbitrary deprivation of life and disappearance of children. The local residents were subjected to torture, prison, detention and arbitrary interference with privacy, families and homes. All these are examples of ethical dilemmas that the mining companies encountered as a result of removing the local population in search of the valuable minerals. Their actions can be considered to be ethical dilemmas since their mistreatments and displacement of people to get the minerals were morally wrong (Richards, 2009).

Ethical continuum theory suggests that moral continuum should be maintained based on the principle of moral objectivism. However, the mining companies objected the theory by increasing cases of unrests of the communities that were living on Tambogrande hill (Kline, 2010). The mining companies also objected the Ethical Theory of Pyramid since they failed to develop good intent of verifiable practice. They failed to incorporate a standard pyramid structure that should integrate ethical intent, means and the end, in their typical public relation plans (Tilley, 2009).

References

Kline, J. (2010). Ethics for international business: decision-making in a global political

economy. New York, NY: Routledge

Richards, J. (2009). Mining, Society, and a Sustainable World. New York, NY: Springer Science

& Business Media

Tilley, E. (2009). The Ethics Pyramid: Making Ethics Unavoidable in the Public Relations

Process. Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Exploring Questions of Media Morality, 20(4), 305-320

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