Latin America Now Regulates Mining

Latin America Is No Longer the Unregulated “Paradise” for the Mining Companies: World Bank Economist

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 * There are 120 disputes in the region; rejection because of the environmental impact

Lima, February 13, 2012

The mining boom that Latin America is living in due to increased demand and prices on the international market is resisted through regional strikes, demonstrations and marches by the affected populations that have come out in defense of the environment and water.

“There is an increase in the number and in the intensity of the mining conflicts because of the water, the extension of mining concessions, the contamination of the rivers, the displacement of activities and the population,” explained the economist José de Echave, Peru’s former Vice Minister of Environment. “But they are, above all, because of the water,” he added.

From Mexico to Patagonia several mega-projects have been stopped and even suspended by the inflexible opposition of citizens to sacrificing the environment despite environmental impact studies that the companies present and the messages of progress with social inclusion (job creation) with which the authorities justify their approval.

The problem is that to extract gold, silver, copper, zinc or iron, many times one must move entire peoples from the place, cut down forests with the native plants and animals or even dry up lakes and empty them.

Environmental organizations criticize that the companies use millions of liters of water to extract minerals and also resort to the use of highly contaminating cyanide, as in the case of the open sky mines, for separating gold from the rock.

One clear example is Panama, where the conflict between the indigenous Ngöbe-Buglé and the government because of a copper deposit with 17 million tons has left two dead this week.

According to Raisa Banfield, director of the Sustainable Panama Foundation, the project contemplates “cutting down five thousand hectares of forest. There will be a loss of biodiversity and habitat for native species and contamination of soil, of underground water and rivers,” she explained.

In Northeast Peru, after weeks of disturbances that led President Ollanta Humala to decree the state of emergency, the 4 billion 800 million dollar Conga project, was suspended while waiting for three foreign experts to evaluate the environmental impact study presented by the Yanacocha Company.

In Argentina, some 20 people were detained on Wednesday, February 1 in the eviction of a highway blockage that sought to impede the exploitation of Bajo La Alumbrera, the largest gold and copper deposit in the country’s northwest.

Here, the locality of Famatina (1300 kilometers to the northwest of Buenos Aires) had already become emblematic, which in the last few years achieved suspending two gold projects.

There are also projects paralyzed in other countries, like Costa Rica and Colombia. According to data from the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America, there are more than 120 disputes in the region.

“It is certain that hay a new environmental conscience in the residents. But the people are also realizing the extra-normal profits that mining leaves and they want part of those profits to stay in their region,” explained Juan Carlos Belausteguigoitia, a World Bank environmental economist for Latin America and the Caribbean del Banco Mundial.

According to the international financial institution, 30 percent of the investment in exploration of new deposits is in Latin America. In countries like Chile, Peru or Colombia, the mining sector can reach 20 percent of the GNP.

In Brazil, mining production reached an estimated 11 billion dollars in 2011, 20 percent more than the previous year, while Ecuador foresees for 2012 an increase of 5.35 percent of the GNP, thanks to the exploitation of gold and silver.

Despite the opportunities that it offers, Latin America is no longer the unregulated “paradise” for the big mining companies.

“It has advanced a lot as far as environmental regulation, although there is still more to do. Until a little while ago, the Ministries of Environment were the little brothers in the cabinets,” Belausteguigoitia explains.

“Now, inasmuch as the corporations are larger, they have to be more accountable and they have greater probabilities of improving their environmental performance,” he adds, without forgetting that legal vacuums still exist as to prevention of the long-term environmental impact after the mine closes.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

English Translation: Chiapas Support Committee

Para leer en español:

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/02/14/mundo/029n2mun

 

 

 

Raúl Zibechi: Land, Water and Resistance

Land, Water and Resistance

 By: Raúl Zibechi

 Para español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/02/10/opinion/024a2pol

What is happening in Latin America in relation to the commons (water, land, biodiversity) is something more than a succession of local conflicts. At times the intensity of the confrontations gives the impression that we are marching toward a general conflagration, which for now has local and regional expressions, but which is repeated in almost every country.

The Big National March for Water, which began on February 1 in Cajamarca [Peru], is the popular movements’ response to the repression and to the state of emergency in three provinces by Ollanta Humala’s government, faced with the 11-day strike in Cajamarca against the Conga mining project. The caravan will arrive in Lima this Friday to stop the use of contaminants like mercury and to declare water as a human right.

Conga is a project of the Yanacocha Mining Company, first in gold extraction in South America, which foresees investing almost 5 billion dollars and draining four lakes, two to extract gold and another two for storing waste. The activities at Conga have been paralyzed since the November strike. The most important thing is that the movement has achieved transcending the local to become the confluence of the most important social organizations for a large action with a national character.

Resistance to mining has been reactivated in Northern Argentina. In January, citizen assemblies impelled mass mobilizations, in La Rioja, Catamarca and Tucumán, against the Famatina and Bajo La Alumbrera mining projects. The popular mobilization in La Rioja forced the communal chief of the provincial capital to state that he was against mega-mining, although he is aligned with the national government.

The blockage of trucks that are headed to Bajo La Alumbrera in Catamarca led the company to license the personnel and delay the exploitation due to a lack of inputs and provisions at the mine. More than three weeks ago, members of the Citizens Assembly in Defense of Life and Water blocked the transit of trucks that belong to the mining company and that circulate through Tinogasta, Belén and Santa María.

One of the less visible conflicts but with great destabilizing potential is that which is happening in Paraguay between campesinos and settlers of Brazilian origin, known popularly as Brasiguayos. It is estimated that there are 8 million hectares, 20 percent of the country’s surface, illegally adjudicated, above all under the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989). An important part was delivered to settlers coming from Brazil, at up to one dollar per hectare in the border zone.

Now they are large producers son of soy that take out their product through Brazil without even paying taxes. Tranquilo Favero, “the soy king,” owns 45, 000 hectares of high quality lands on which he harvests up to 130, 000 tons each year, which renders him some 50 million dollars, in the Ñacunday zone, Alto Paraná. This is the hottest region of the current conflict, in which landless and landholders confront each other, but in which the governments of Fernando Lugo and Dilma Rousseff are also involved.

If the production of soy, with its consequent contamination and expulsion of campesinos, is grave, so is the border question. Of the 400, 000 Brazilians that live in Paraguay, some 250, 000 occupy the border with Brazil. In 2007 the Paraguayan government approved the Border Law because of which foreigners cannot have lands at least 50 kilometers from the border, as a way of affirming national sovereignty. Brazil has similar law, although stricter.

In 2011, The National Coordinator of Struggle for the Recuperation of Ill-Gotten Lands was formed –in which more than 20 campesino organizations, social organizations and leftist parties participate–, which held its first march last October 25. The leaders maintain that the recuperation of those lands could favor 400, 000 campesinos.

The land question is one of the most delicate themes in Paraguay, because of the long history of corruption, abuse and repression that forced the plunder of campesinos. Lugo took government power in large measure because of his close relationship to the struggle for agrarian reform when he was a bishop. The agrarian reform struggle did not advance under his government, but in recent months the campesinos grouped together in the National League of Tent Dwellers (because they camp in tents) are occupying the Brasiguayos lands.

The League was born two years ago faced with the inaction of the campesino movement in the struggle for land, but in a recent communication the Coordinator estimates that their actions form part of a “destabilizing strategy” against the Lugo government and that at its interior is “excelling the influence of provocateurs that objectively prejudice the historic struggle for land and agrarian reform.”

In the complex panorama of the Paraguayan movements, it is not convenient to simplify. The “tent-dwellers” [occupiers?] struggle is legitimate but everything indicates that grouped together with a new layer of popular leaders one is able to perceive the influence of traditional right-wing politicians, now reds or liberals, those allied with Lugo, and opportunists that are always present. Nevertheless, it is also certain that the historic movements, which make up the Coordinator, prioritize negotiations instead of pressure for agrarian reform from below, and seem to be very worried about the presidential succession in the 2013 elections.

The struggle for the commons is in first place on the agenda in the whole region. It is possible, as a union leader from Chilecito points out, that the multi-national mining companies are suffering “a catastrophic defeat” in Northern Argentina. Small groups like the citizen assemblies, in remote places of the mountain range (cordillera), have achieved stopping gigantic corporations that enjoyed state support for everything. It is a lot. It is the product of tenacity, which at any moment renders fruits.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

English Translation: Chiapas Support Committee

Friday, February 10, 2012

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/02/10/opinion/024a2pol