by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 15, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling, Prostitution, Toxification, Worker Exploitation
By Paulina Abramovich / Agence France-Presse
A new gold rush is sweeping through Latin America with devastating consequences, ravaging tropical forests and dumping toxic chemicals as illegal miners fight against big international projects.
With international market prices for metals high, informal “wildcat” mining has been on the rise in recent years in countries like Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, itself one of the largest producers of silver, copper and gold.
Mining investments in those countries are expected to reach some $300 billion in 2020, according to the Inter-American Mining Society.
But over 160 mining conflicts have erupted across the region amid growing opposition from locals against projects they consider a threat to the environment, the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America says.
During the past decade, the price of gold went from $270 to between $1,600-1,800 per ounce, as people rushed to convert their cash into the precious metal seen as a safe investment during the global economic crisis.
And the price of copper is at an all-time high thanks to China’s insatiable appetite for it.
Unlicensed mining, especially for gold, has already killed hundreds of people and devastated thousands of hectares (acres) in the Amazon forest, where miners have set up camps that destroy everything in their path.
To extract each ounce of gold, it takes two or three ounces of mercury, which fouls waterways after being poured into rivers from the mining sites. In their search for water, the miners raze tropical forestsusing bulldozers.
The phenomenon has also sown disaster among the local population, with thousands of men, women and children exploited and living in squalid camps with no schools or health centers.
In Peru, an estimated 110,000 to 150,000 people work in illegal mines, while a thousand children are sexually exploited in brothels known locally as “prostibars” in the southeastern province of Madre de Dios, according to Save The Children.
The practice is particularly widespread in the improvised mining camps, where fortune-hunter try to make a living from the illegal exploitation of precious metals.
“There are dozens of prostibars, filled with hundreds of girls who were told they would make a lot of money,” said Teresa Carpio, director of Save the Children in Peru.
“It’s total exploitation of a human being. Living conditions are appalling and all human values are perverted.”
Indigenous and black communities have long used child workers for gold mining. And an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 children currently work in small-scale mining in Colombia, according to Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM) data.
In Madre de Dios, one of the poorest regions of Peru, about 18 tonnes of gold are produced per year, while some 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of tropical forest are destroyed.
Thousands of people in Colombia have started exploiting abandoned mines in the northwestern department of Antioquia and Choco. In Bolivia, about 10,000 people make a living off the illegal mining of gold in extreme conditions, ARM says.
The growing thirst for mineral resources makes Latin America one of the most attractive regions for investment, set to dominate world production of precious metals by 2020.
Today, Latin America accounts for 45 percent of global copper production, 50 percent of silver and 20 percent of gold.
Read more from Mother Nature Network:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 25, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Mining & Drilling
By Dawn Paley / The Dominion
The hard fought battle against the Keystone XL pipeline, which was slated to carry tar sands crude across Canada and the United States to port in Texas, kicked struggles against Canadian-owned oil and gas companies up to a new level. Resistance dominated headlines in Canada, while rural folk, Indigenous people, celebrities, and climate activists in the US took direct action to block Calgary-based TransCanada’s plans. In northern BC, Indigenous-led resistance to the proposed Enbridge pipeline, along with a host of other US-owned infrastructure projects, have become front and centre issues for environmentalists and activists across Canada.
The role of Canadian oil, gas and pipeline companies in other parts of the world is, however, less discussed. Many activists have focused on the behavior of the Canadian mining sector, a natural choice given the size of that sector compared to the oil and gas industries in Canada. “In Canada, a major difference between the oil and gas and mining sectors is that while many of Canada’s largest companies are oil and gas producers, some with integrated operations, they are not particularly prominent in the global arena just now,” reads a 2008 report by the Economic Commission on Latin America.
It’s been four years since that report was released, and it might be time to revisit the idea that the Canadian oil and gas sector hasn’t gained prominence on a global scale. Take the case of Latin America, where a host of oil and gas companies based in Calgary and Toronto have been increasing their holdings throughout the hemisphere, taking advantage of the same lax legal standards Canadian mining companies enjoy.
A study by Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP found that in 2010, Canadian oil and gas companies made over $35 billion in mergers and acquisitions in Central and Latin America, and the region is the second most attractive place (after the United States) for Canadian oil companies to invest outside of Canada. Colombia in particular has quickly become a favourite destination for this new surge of Canadian oil and gas investment.
At the same time as the Canadian Senate approved a free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia in June of 2010, a government-hosted bidding fair on oil and gas properties was taking place in Cartagena, Colombia. “I have some good news for our Canadian friends. The Senate has just approved a free trade agreement…so that opens the way for a lot of opportunities and our government is very happy about that,” said then-Colombian Energy and Mining Minister Hernan Martinez to corporate representatives bidding on oil and gas concessions in Cartagena that day.
Canadian oil companies were among the chief supporters of the agreement, which was roundly criticized because of the continued killings, kidnapping and displacement of Indigenous people, trade unionists, peasants, dissenters and the poor in Colombia. A free trade agreement with Peru was approved by the Canadian Senate a little later, on the heels of a massacre in the Amazon province of Bagua where an estimated 100 people were killed during protests in defense of their lands.
Pacific Rubiales and Talisman, two of the most important Canadian oil companies in Colombia, have already come under intense criticism linked to the high environmental and social cost of their operations.
Read more from The Dominion: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4439
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 19, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay
More than 150 new dams planned across the Amazon basin could significantly disrupt the ecological connectivity of the Amazon River to the Andes with substantial impacts for fish populations, nutrient cycling, and the health of Earth’s largest rainforest, warns a comprehensive study published in the journal PLoS ONE.
Scouring public data and submitting information requests to governments, researchers Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests and Clinton Jenkins of North Carolina State University documented plans for new dams in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. They found that 40 percent of the projects are already in advanced planning stages and more than half would be large dams over 100 megawatts. 60 percent of the dams “would cause the first major break in connectivity between protected Andean headwaters and the lowland Amazon”, while more than 80 percent “would drive deforestation due to new roads, transmission lines, or inundation.”
“These results are quite troubling given the critical link between the Andes Mountains and the Amazonian floodplain,” said lead author Finer in a statement. “There appears to be no strategic planning regarding possible consequences to the disruption of an ecological connection that has existed for millions of years.”
Finer and Jenkins note that the Andes are a critical source of sediments, nutrients, and organic matter for the Amazon river, feeding the floodplain that supports the rich Amazon rainforest. The Amazon and it tributaries are critical highways for migratory fish that move to headwaters areas to spawn.”Many economically and ecologically important Amazonian fish species spawn only in Andean-fed rivers, including a number that migrate from the lowlands to the foothills,” the authors write. “The Andean Amazon is also home to some of the most species rich forests and rivers on Earth. The region is documented to contain extraordinary richness for the most well studied taxa… and high levels of endemism for the understudied fishes. Therefore, any dam-driven forest loss or river impacts are of critical concern.”Finer and Jenkins conducted a meta-analysis of river connectivity and infrastructure to produce an “ecological impact score” for all 151 dams. 47 percent of the dams were classified as “high impact” while only 19 percent were rated “low impact”. Eleven of the dams would directly affect a conservation area.
The hydroelectric projects would also have social impacts. Forty dams would be constructed “immediately upstream or downstream” on an indigenous territory.Worryingly the authors conclude that there is seemingly no basin-wide policy assessment of the potential social and ecological impacts of the dam-building spree.“We conclude that there is an urgent need for strategic basin scale evaluation of new dams and a plan to maintain Andes-Amazon connectivity,” said study co-author Jenkins in a statement. “We also call for a reconsideration of the notion that hydropower is a widespread low impact energy source in the Neotropics.” Finer and Jenkins warn that the perception dams in tropical forest areas are a clean energy source could lead to perverse subsidies for the projects via the carbon market.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
By Elias Cabrera / Inter Press Service & Corpwatch
A thick fog flows over the eastern range of the Colombian Andes. Here and there, the constant wind lifts the clouds to reveal lagoons, cloud forests, and páramo, an Andean alpine ecosystem known as a “mountaintop sponge” for its massive water-holding capacity.
Descending lower into the Upper Magdalena Valley, about 400 kilometres southwest of Bogotá, rural communities farm a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops, and raise animals that not only sustain families, but help feed Colombia’s major cities.
In the municipal districts of Gigante and Garzón in the department (province) of Huila, the bucolic setting is interrupted by the platforms of several oil wells belonging to Emerald Energy PLC.
Emerald Energy, founded in London in 1996, was awarded its first exploration permit for the Matambo Bloc in Gigante. (Governments typically auction off oil exploration rights on specific parcels of land known as blocks or blocs.)
On Aug. 9, 2011, the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development issued Environmental License 1609 to Emerald Energy, allowing it to install five new platforms and three oil wells in the VSM 32 Bloc, adjacent and uphill of the Matambo Bloc.
Four months after the permit was authorised, campesinos opposing the project gathered in the farming village of Zuluaga.
“I believe we are all united here because of the Emerald’s crude behaviour within our region,” said Luis Jorge Sanchez Garcia, Huila’s former governor. “It is vital that we unite to protect our natural resources from oil development, (and) in particular protect our water. If some disaster happens, it will not affect just the countryside where the operations are; it will affect our entire region.”
“Emerald Energy is destroying the land and water,” Armando Acuña, a municipal council member from Garzón, told CorpWatch. “Their exploration, with underground explosions is causing landslides and the ground to sink, homes, and crops are being destroyed and we are losing our water.”
Communities defend Matambo
Unique to the Americas, páramo are mostly found in the Andes Mountains, with more than 60 percent occurring in Colombia. The vegetation, a unique mixture of lichens, mosses, algae and grasses, has incredible water retention capacity, birthing major rivers such as the Orinoco, Magdalena and Amazon.
The Matambo Bloc, which sits below the páramo in the Magdalena Valley, gets its name from a mountain in the shape of the face of a giant who, according to local legend, will one day arise from the earth.
Since the Matambo Bloc was opened, the region encompassed by the operations has seen a steady deterioration of its land and water, according to the Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG).
In 2000, two years after the Gigante 1 well was drilled to 4,815 metres, “there was an explosion that resulted in a fire that burned for 25 days with a flame that was about 30 meters high, shutting down operations,” Jorge Enrique Alvarado, a municipal council member, told CorpWatch.
“This whole area had a dense hazy cloud over it during that whole month and the area nearby had all sorts of burnt oil and ash accumulated on their crops, cattle and fish ponds.”
In early January, the communities affected by Emerald Energy attempted to stop Emerald’s expansion.
“As of November 2011 we have been blocking the entrance to all operations in VSM 32 Bloc, and do not intend to allow any machinery to enter,” said Alberto Calderon, a member of Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG), at a public roundtable that followed the blockade.
The middle-aged farmer lives with his wife, two children and some cows and chickens on a small, self-sufficient farm that produces coffee, avocados, onions, and cacao. His land borders Emerald’s oil well Iskana 1.
“Nothing they have brought us has helped us,” he said of Emerald. “Our rivers are drying. They foment divisions within the community, and our youth do not want to work the land after they have worked for the company.”
Read more from Inter Press Service: https://web.archive.org/web/20120328214541/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=107155
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 5, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Polinizaciones
“This is not done here, we will continue to fight, but this feels worse than when the humans destroy the tree in the movie AVATAR,” lamented Luisa Aguas, from the local community organization Comunidad. On March 3 at approximately 5:37pm, Emgesa, affiliate of Spanish-Italian Energy Giant Enel-Endesa, announcedthat they had successfully begun the diverting of the Guacahayo-Yuma-Magdalena River from its natural course as part of the construction of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project in Huila, Colombia. Project Manager Julio Santafé told local press that late Sunday the remaining rocks and dirt will be excavated from the tunnel where the river will be diverted through to enable the next phase of the project of building the dam. The complete diverting of the river should be completed by Monday.
“The diverting of the River will only make us stronger and will for sure, lead to the death of Emgesa” said Miller Dussan, ASOQUIMBO Investigator and Professor of the South Colombian University, next to the highway during the meeting. Dussan shared that “Senate Vice-President Alexander Lopez has already released his questionnaire investigating the Minister of the Interior, German Vargas Lleras, for claiming he could not do anything about the violent removals on the [Feb.] 14th and 15th when later the Mayor of Paicol informed that he was pressured to do so by Vargas Lleras. Vargas Lleras brother is José Antonio Vargas Lleras who is the director of CODENSA the Colombian affiliate that owns and operates Endesa affiliates Bogotá Electrical Company and Emgesa.
After being pushed back over a month from protests and strikes held by affected local populations by the dam, Saturday’s diverting was programmed for the morning. However, multiple direct actions in the area of the construction delayed the diverting to the late afternoon. Nearly 300 hundred campesinos, indigenous, students and youth faced off with riot police at the construction sites entrance near the damaged Paso del Colegio Bridge closing off traffic to the entrance of the site, eventually marching to the national highway. At the same time around 90 fisher-people up river of the dam site occupied the tunnel and surrounding beaches until they were apprehended and detained for some time before being released. The group that marched to the highway held a meeting and blockade until the end of the day and there is currently still an encampment of fisher-people up river of the site. Throughout the day internet cyber-activist Anonymous, as part of #OpQuimbo, was blocking the website for the Ministry of Mines, Emgesa and the Huila regional government.
Saturday’s actions were part of a series of protests and direct actions called for by the Association of the Affected of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project –ASOQUIMBO that have been happening globally over the last week. In Huila the towns of Gigante, Garzón, La Plata and regional capitol Neiva, has seen thousands of grade-school students and youth take to the streets in marches paralyzing those urban centers. On national level solidarity actions in Bogotá, Cali, Pereira, Mocoa, and Medellin have taken place with calls to “flood the Ministry of Environment”. Internationally the support has come over the last week from protests or visits at Colombian Embassies in Miami, Washington DC & New York City, United States; Buenos Aires, Argentina and in London, UK. This next week there are more actions planned for Barcelona, Spain and second protest planned in Rome, Italy at the Enel Offices. All the actions have been in solidarity with the people of Huila and calling for a suspension of the Quimbo Dam and an end to the State violence used against protesters.
Since the violent removals of protesters from the bank of the river in Domingo Arias, Paicol on February 14 and 15, President Santos has publicly claimed that riot police used completely “normal procedures” and made no mention of the 7 people wounded, including one person who lost his right eye. He also stated that the “progress of the country would not be held back by personal interests”. During the day´s actions President Santo´s told media that the protests are “infiltrated by guerrillas” and “people not from the area”.
This comes a day after that President Santos receives the Hero of Environmental Conservation Award in Cartagena, presented to him by pro-business environmental organization Conservation International (CI). CI is best known for helping environmentally destructive corporations green-wash their image, while also being accused by indigenous communities of acts of biopiracy. Last week the new ranking for the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) of the world´s countries was released by Yale University and Colombia had dropped 17 spots (EPI).
During Saturday´s mobilization the Minister of Mines and Energy, Mauricio Cárdenas, told national media, that three of the country’s major hydroelectric projects—Ituango in Antioquia, Amoyá in Tolima and the Quimbo—were all being threatened with “sabotage” by political and armed forces opposed to the projects.
On a continental level, these mobilizations against hydroelectric projects have increased in recent months throughout South and Central America. Just last month protesters of the Ngobe-Buglé people were brutalized and left two people dead in protests in Panamá against mining and a planned Dam and the conflicts with Brazil´s mega dams in the Amazon Basin such as Belo Monte are on-going. In addition to the Quimbo Dam, Endesa is also damming rivers and creating multiple conflicts within Mapuche Territory along the Bio Bio River in Southern Chile and along the Chixoy River in Mayan Territory of Guatemala.
Also Saturday, the National Treasury announced that starting next week prosecutors from the Environmental Crimes and Anti-Corruption Unit will be opening an investigation to look into possible irregularities with the U$334 million contract that the Colombian government signed with companies Emgesa and Impregilo for the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project . The prosecutors will also look into allegations of environmental destruction, forced displacement and threats to local inhabitants. In the evening further south in the municipality of Timaná, approximately 60 milometers from the Quimbo site and the site of a future dam Emgesa hopes to build in Huila in the Pericongo Canyon, an earthquake hit the area with a rating of 3.5 on the Richter scale.
This week a statement is expected from the Comptroller’s Office regarding an on-going investigation since January of irregularities in the company’s census, compensation and resettlement of the affected population.
More marches are expected regionally and internationally on Tuesday, March 6 and ASOQUIMBO is maintaining its call for solidarity direct actions. Regionally the communities in resistance prepare for the next steps in the struggle for the defense of the Upper Guacahayo-Yuma-Magdalena River Valley.
While riding in the back of a truck in the rain leaving the site of the day´s actions, unemployed day laborer and part time fisher-woman Ximena Chavarro shared that “The State is leaving us very few options. It is disregarding and abusing its own laws and due process that protect us the inhabitants, our territory and the river which is everyone’s all to be able to secure Uribe´s ‘investor confidence’. Right now we all feel so violated and furious that we understand why others in similar situations resort to violence even though we have never wanted to go there.”
