Amanda is a dual degree M.A. candidate in Latin American Studies and MSCRP at UNM.
This research was made possible in part by funding from the Latin American & Iberian Institute and Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant (FRG). For more information about the FRG please visit the LAII website.
Courtesy of Amanda Hooker : Santurban Spring During the summer of 2013, with funding awarded by the Latin American and Iberian Institute, I traveled to Bogotá and Bucaramanga for preliminary thesis research on large-scale mining in Colombia. I investigated the role that transnational, specifically Canadian, mining operations play in shaping ecologies and the social fabric of communities through one case study. The Angostura Mine site, property of Canadian Eco Oro (formerly Greystar), in the high mountain wetlands of Santander, Colombia is a current and emblematic example of the complexities that arise between territorial governance, environmental management, and land and labor rights in areas ceded to transnational capital. The research exposed further questions for investigation in land planning and political ecology, namely, the paradoxes that allow large-scale mining to be considered “sustainable development.” The case brings to light the discord between human rights/environmental protections and transnational businesses operations in areas of social conflict. The most hopeful thread in the complex story is the formation and growth of a civil society coalition, The Committee for the Defense of Water and Santurbán Páramo, comprised of individuals and organizations across a broad political spectrum that has, so far, succeeded in pressuring the government to protect their water source: a fragile and vital páramo ecosystem.
Mining in Colombia
Large-scale mining has become an increasingly contentious topic of public and political debate in Colombia since the end of the Alvaro Uribe administration in 2010. At that time, thousands of mining titles were expeditiously granted to multinational companies on the eve of a reformed mining code that made environmental protections more explicit and restrictive. The debate has extended into the current presidency of Juan Manuel Santos, which promotes large-scale mining as a “driving force’ (locomotora minero-energetico) for national economic development as written into the National Development Plan.
According to the National Mining Company Union, Sintraminercol, 87% of all displaced persons in Colombia are expelled from mining and energy producing regions—no small fact given that Colombia has one of the highest rates of internally displaced people in the world. Its rural population has largely born the brunt of more than 60 years of armed conflict between army, paramilitary and guerrilla actors. This context, taken with the International Monetary Fund imposed market reforms and privatization of many industries, has given rise to a notable pattern: multinationals tend to appear in places that have previously suffered paramlitary attacks (Fierro 2012).
It is interesting to note that the office of the current Comptroller General (Contraloría General) has taken a critical view of President Santos’ stance on mining. This office cites the economically exploitative conditions under which multinationals operate: they pay only $16 in royalties for every $100 of earnings (Garay 2013). The Comptroller’s office also estimates that for every $100 that Colombia gains in royalties, it ends up paying $118 to offset the mining industry’s externalities in environmental and social harms. While some activists bolster the Comptroller’s challenge to the Santos administration, other organizations note that such discourse does not go far enough in halting injurious environmental effects. It presents a view of mining as a viable economic development activity: one that, at very least, should be more heavily taxed and regulated, and at most, nationalized.
An array of social organizations, scholars, journalists, and political and civil society groups at the national level have vocally opposed large-scale mining in any form and are calling for a moratorium (most urgently in areas of conflict, land-restitution, and delicate wetland ecosystems) until its economic, environmental, and social effects can be effectively evaluated.
Large-scale mining has become an increasingly contentious topic of public and political debate in Colombia since the end of the Alvaro Uribe administration in 2010. At that time, thousands of mining titles were expeditiously granted to multinational companies on the eve of a reformed mining code that made environmental protections more explicit and restrictive. The debate has extended into the current presidency of Juan Manuel Santos, which promotes large-scale mining as a “driving force’ (locomotora minero-energetico) for national economic development as written into the National Development Plan.
According to the National Mining Company Union, Sintraminercol, 87% of all displaced persons in Colombia are expelled from mining and energy producing regions—no small fact given that Colombia has one of the highest rates of internally displaced people in the world. Its rural population has largely born the brunt of more than 60 years of armed conflict between army, paramilitary and guerrilla actors. This context, taken with the International Monetary Fund imposed market reforms and privatization of many industries, has given rise to a notable pattern: multinationals tend to appear in places that have previously suffered paramlitary attacks (Fierro 2012).
It is interesting to note that the office of the current Comptroller General (Contraloría General) has taken a critical view of President Santos’ stance on mining. This office cites the economically exploitative conditions under which multinationals operate: they pay only $16 in royalties for every $100 of earnings (Garay 2013). The Comptroller’s office also estimates that for every $100 that Colombia gains in royalties, it ends up paying $118 to offset the mining industry’s externalities in environmental and social harms. While some activists bolster the Comptroller’s challenge to the Santos administration, other organizations note that such discourse does not go far enough in halting injurious environmental effects. It presents a view of mining as a viable economic development activity: one that, at very least, should be more heavily taxed and regulated, and at most, nationalized.
An array of social organizations, scholars, journalists, and political and civil society groups at the national level have vocally opposed large-scale mining in any form and are calling for a moratorium (most urgently in areas of conflict, land-restitution, and delicate wetland ecosystems) until its economic, environmental, and social effects can be effectively evaluated.
Courtesy of Amanda Hooker : Angostura Mine Canada and Colombia Mining Legislation
Since 1997, The Canadian government has intervened in formulating Colombian mining norms and policies through the Canadian Energy Research institute (CERI). CERI participated heavily in writing the Colombian mining code of 2001, (the code currently in effect). Around 40% of the mining companies in the Colombian national mining registry are now Canadian. (Fiero 2012)
The mining code of 2001 declared mining an “activity for public utility and social interest,” which made the mineral rights completely independent of land rights. This gives the national government autonomy to grant mining titles anywhere in national territory, regardless of who owns the land. Further, a new law enacted in 2013, which seeks to harmonize mining governance and land governance, explicitly forbids departmental, municipal or other regional authorities from seeking to prevent mining in their jurisdiction. Additionally, the mining code of 2001 gave corporations the ability to write their own environmental impact statement, with no external oversight, for the exploratory phase of operations (Humbolt Institute).
Eco Oro and Santurbán Páramo
The Angostura mining concession solicited by Greystar Ltd (now Eco Oro), a Canadian mining company lies deep in the eastern Colombian Andes. Greystar sought permission from the Colombian Government to mine for gold and silver in the mountain system known as Santurbán, specifically near the stream of Angostura, from which the mining project takes its name. The unique biology of the páramo ecosystem supplies water not only to the surrounding rural mountain inhabitants, but to 2.2 million inhabitants of Bucaramanga and Cucuta and nearly 20 nearby municipalities.
Páramos are important bio-systems that generate potable water. They are found at an altitude of 3,000 to 5,000 meters and in the case of Santurbán, cover nearly 83,000 hecatares. The integrity of the páramo system has major implications for the public health of the inhabitants of the entire Santander province. According to the Humboldt Institute, 75% of all Colombian inhabitants receive their water from páramo systems along the western, central and eastern cordilleras of the Andes. At least 7 percent of the total national páramo land is now in hands of mining companies and more is being sought.
Given the government’s hesitation to grant the mining license because of public protests, Greystar withdrew its original project plan of an open-pit gold mine, while being concurrently denied its license by the Ministry of the Environment. Greystar was forced to admit the environmental damage the project would have caused to the delicate páramo ecosystem. Yet, in the period of a few months, Greystar changed its name (to Eco Oro), its board of directors, and its public image as a socially and environmentally responsible corporation. It returned to the Ministry of the Environment proposing to undertake an underground mining tunnel instead of open-pit excavation. Eco Oro claimed that it would thereby circumvent many of the negative impacts associated with initial plan of an open pit mine. However, as an ecologist from Humbolt Institute explained to me, digging a tunnel into the side of a páramo mountain will have similar levels of effects to that of open-pit mining over the long term. In the páramos the flora, soil and even rocks serves as a sponges. Digging underground can prove fatal for the ecosystem since drainage will leach water and nutrients from the layer of vegetation above the tunnel. This important exterior vegetative layer will gradually die, or at least be much less affective in capturing and storing water.
Eco Oro continues to insist that its proposed area of operations are outside of the area that can be considered páramo, and so should not be denied their environmental license given their new proposed underground extraction. I arrived in the months preceding the official governmental delimitation of the area that will be considered protected in the area. At the beginning of the year, the boundaries of a national park of 11,700 hectares were drawn near the mining site. The departmental environmental authority demarcated boundaries that left 90% of Eco Oro’s property (96% of the equivalent of its gold vein) outside the surface boundaries of the park including a glaringly asymmetrical bulge, which left the mine site itself outside of the regulated zone. Many people I interviewed argued that the protections intentionally circumvented the mine site, given that its altitude is above 3,000 meters.
Since 1997, The Canadian government has intervened in formulating Colombian mining norms and policies through the Canadian Energy Research institute (CERI). CERI participated heavily in writing the Colombian mining code of 2001, (the code currently in effect). Around 40% of the mining companies in the Colombian national mining registry are now Canadian. (Fiero 2012)
The mining code of 2001 declared mining an “activity for public utility and social interest,” which made the mineral rights completely independent of land rights. This gives the national government autonomy to grant mining titles anywhere in national territory, regardless of who owns the land. Further, a new law enacted in 2013, which seeks to harmonize mining governance and land governance, explicitly forbids departmental, municipal or other regional authorities from seeking to prevent mining in their jurisdiction. Additionally, the mining code of 2001 gave corporations the ability to write their own environmental impact statement, with no external oversight, for the exploratory phase of operations (Humbolt Institute).
Eco Oro and Santurbán Páramo
The Angostura mining concession solicited by Greystar Ltd (now Eco Oro), a Canadian mining company lies deep in the eastern Colombian Andes. Greystar sought permission from the Colombian Government to mine for gold and silver in the mountain system known as Santurbán, specifically near the stream of Angostura, from which the mining project takes its name. The unique biology of the páramo ecosystem supplies water not only to the surrounding rural mountain inhabitants, but to 2.2 million inhabitants of Bucaramanga and Cucuta and nearly 20 nearby municipalities.
Páramos are important bio-systems that generate potable water. They are found at an altitude of 3,000 to 5,000 meters and in the case of Santurbán, cover nearly 83,000 hecatares. The integrity of the páramo system has major implications for the public health of the inhabitants of the entire Santander province. According to the Humboldt Institute, 75% of all Colombian inhabitants receive their water from páramo systems along the western, central and eastern cordilleras of the Andes. At least 7 percent of the total national páramo land is now in hands of mining companies and more is being sought.
Given the government’s hesitation to grant the mining license because of public protests, Greystar withdrew its original project plan of an open-pit gold mine, while being concurrently denied its license by the Ministry of the Environment. Greystar was forced to admit the environmental damage the project would have caused to the delicate páramo ecosystem. Yet, in the period of a few months, Greystar changed its name (to Eco Oro), its board of directors, and its public image as a socially and environmentally responsible corporation. It returned to the Ministry of the Environment proposing to undertake an underground mining tunnel instead of open-pit excavation. Eco Oro claimed that it would thereby circumvent many of the negative impacts associated with initial plan of an open pit mine. However, as an ecologist from Humbolt Institute explained to me, digging a tunnel into the side of a páramo mountain will have similar levels of effects to that of open-pit mining over the long term. In the páramos the flora, soil and even rocks serves as a sponges. Digging underground can prove fatal for the ecosystem since drainage will leach water and nutrients from the layer of vegetation above the tunnel. This important exterior vegetative layer will gradually die, or at least be much less affective in capturing and storing water.
Eco Oro continues to insist that its proposed area of operations are outside of the area that can be considered páramo, and so should not be denied their environmental license given their new proposed underground extraction. I arrived in the months preceding the official governmental delimitation of the area that will be considered protected in the area. At the beginning of the year, the boundaries of a national park of 11,700 hectares were drawn near the mining site. The departmental environmental authority demarcated boundaries that left 90% of Eco Oro’s property (96% of the equivalent of its gold vein) outside the surface boundaries of the park including a glaringly asymmetrical bulge, which left the mine site itself outside of the regulated zone. Many people I interviewed argued that the protections intentionally circumvented the mine site, given that its altitude is above 3,000 meters.
Courtesy of Amanda Hooker : Frailejones Santurbán Páramo Delimitation Debate
Exactly where the protective boundary line should be drawn is being ardently debated by two groups of people—the urban-based Committee for the Defense of Water and Santurbán Páramo (Committee) in Bucaramanga, against a local group that presents (and claims to present) the interests of inhabitants of Santurbán Páramo. This second group comprised of mayors, town councils, small miners and the farmers that live in the Santurbán Páramo near the mine site are demanding their rights to decent jobs. Eco Oro and other foreign mining companies in the area, however, make large financial contributions to this group as a way of combatting pressure from the Committee in Bucaramanga, and to counter environmental protections of the Colombian Constitution that have and could further inhibit their extractive activities. The delimitation of the páramo will not only effect the mining multinationals and their employees, but also the small scale-miners and traditional farmers in the area. Around 9000 inhabitants of the Santurbán Páramo could be affected by the delimitation that is set for August of 2013. This group claims that their traditions and history, lifestyles and economies are not being sufficiently considered in land use management. They are pressuring the government not to extend environmental protections outside the boundary of the 11,700-hectare national park. If the protective demarcation is drawn such that it encompasses the homes and productive sites of these rural inhabitants, many could be forced to relocate. Forcibly relocating the inhabitants would not fall short of a tragedy given that many people made these cold, rather inhospitable regions home primarily out of necessity, having been displaced there due to armed conflict.
Downstream and on the opposite side of the debate, the Committee pulls together large groups from a vast spectrum of civil society actors from the major metropolitan area of Bucaramanga. Using the environmental protections of Law 1382 of 2010 that amended the Mining Code to formalize the implicit environmental protections of the Constitution of 1991, the Committee began formally organizing against the mine. They coordinated collective protest actions and most importantly, had major impact on the media in generating public outrage against the project. The organizing culminated in mobilizing several increasingly large marches, the last of which neared 100,000 people. The protesters demanded their rights to safe (and sufficient), cyanide-free water be protected by the state. Many of those urban residents involved in the protests had not previously been politically active. Their identities had been transformed by contesting the environmental management regime that would allow the contamination of not only the materiality of their water sources, but their collective relationship to water as a public good and its symbolic significance to the vitality of life itself. Santander residents viewed the threat the Canadian company posed to their water supply as an affront, not only to public health and natural patrimony, but also to the very terms of their citizenship. Their outrage was directed toward regional and local authorities ready to favor transnational capital over the citizens they claimed to represent.
I interviewed many members of the Committee, including several environmentalists with specialties in páramo ecosystems; the president of a local Chamber of Commerce who was instrumental in leveraging support from the business community in Bucaramanga against mining operations in Santurbán Páramo; and the former director of the Bucaramanga Water Department who played a vital role in alerting the community to the dangers of mining in the páramos for urban residents as well as putting aside difficulties with the Water Worker’s Union to work against the mine.
The Committee’s success in halting mining operations until now may lie in its striking and rare composition: it draws together not only academics, environmentalists, student groups and social activists that have previously campaigned for the “human right to water,” but also members of the elite class. Even during my interviews, some of the polemic political bias and stigmatizations against fellow members of the Committee were evident. However, the group has, and continues to work hard to put aside differences based on class and political ideologies in order to achieve their goals.
Human Rights, Sustainable Development and Water Sovereignty
In the context of land use planning, the Committee for the Defense of the Water and Santurbán offers a concrete and compelling example that validates the importance of massive community mobilization in pressuring government to halt mining and its corrosive effects. In coming years and decades, as climate change exacerbates not only the shrinking of vital páramo lands but also the already harmful and historic situations of internal displacement and civilian casualties, local peoples’ relationship with their environments become more precarious. As communities’ traditions and public health are increasingly threatened, they turn to human rights to frame their grievances. Colombia may not suffer the massacres and mass killings of previous decades, but the institutions and discourse of human rights that responded to that era may not be sufficient in addressing ongoing economic inequalities and harms to the environment. Nor are the wounds of previous decades able to heal in the context of continued selective killings, forced displacement and social intimidation by both state, para-state and insurgent actors, largely linked to transnational natural resource extraction projects.
As with the case of other regions in the Global South, a narrow focus on human rights and atrocity-based analysis, in many ways enables the larger picture of economic violence to be overlooked. All sides in a conflict can be reproached as human rights violators, just as all sides are able to adopt pro-human rights rhetoric. In this context, land-grabs by mining corporations and devastating effects on lives, livelihoods and environments remain out of official discourses (Roy 2012). By focusing on the obligations of states, the contemporary human rights establishment is largely ineffective at mitigating human rights violations by corporations. Furthermore, human rights stress economic liberty, which in practice results in individual appropriation of and control over economic resources at the expense of equality of access and wellbeing. (Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay 2008) Land, water and other natural resources are not seen as collective holdings, but rather as commodities.
An human rights discourse and praxis, then, must be willing to broaden its scope of analysis to account for environmental abuses, state-facilitated corporate land appropriation and land-use consultation processes and planning regimes that render local people objects of management rather than subjects with rights (Escobar 1995). Similarly “sustainable development” discourse and practice would promote true water and food security and sovereignty, while challenging the idea of progress that equates development (rhetorically “sustainable” or not) with unlimited economic growth. The Committee for the Defense of the Water and Santurbán challenges the neoliberal development model as it contests the notion that Corporate Social Responsibility is a sufficient response for mitigating affronts to collective rights and the environment.
References
Charvet, John, and Elisa Kaczynska-Nay (2008) The liberal project and human rights: the theory and practice of a new world order. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Escobar, Arturo (1995). Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Fierro, Julio (2012) Políticas mineras en Colombia. Bogotá: Instituto Latinoamericano para una sociedad y un derecho alternativos.
Garay Salamanca, Luis Jorge (2013) Minería en Colombia: Fundamentos para superar el modelo extractivista. Contraloría General de la Republica de Colombia
Roy, Arudhati (2012) Capitalism: A Ghost-Story. Outlook India On-line.
Exactly where the protective boundary line should be drawn is being ardently debated by two groups of people—the urban-based Committee for the Defense of Water and Santurbán Páramo (Committee) in Bucaramanga, against a local group that presents (and claims to present) the interests of inhabitants of Santurbán Páramo. This second group comprised of mayors, town councils, small miners and the farmers that live in the Santurbán Páramo near the mine site are demanding their rights to decent jobs. Eco Oro and other foreign mining companies in the area, however, make large financial contributions to this group as a way of combatting pressure from the Committee in Bucaramanga, and to counter environmental protections of the Colombian Constitution that have and could further inhibit their extractive activities. The delimitation of the páramo will not only effect the mining multinationals and their employees, but also the small scale-miners and traditional farmers in the area. Around 9000 inhabitants of the Santurbán Páramo could be affected by the delimitation that is set for August of 2013. This group claims that their traditions and history, lifestyles and economies are not being sufficiently considered in land use management. They are pressuring the government not to extend environmental protections outside the boundary of the 11,700-hectare national park. If the protective demarcation is drawn such that it encompasses the homes and productive sites of these rural inhabitants, many could be forced to relocate. Forcibly relocating the inhabitants would not fall short of a tragedy given that many people made these cold, rather inhospitable regions home primarily out of necessity, having been displaced there due to armed conflict.
Downstream and on the opposite side of the debate, the Committee pulls together large groups from a vast spectrum of civil society actors from the major metropolitan area of Bucaramanga. Using the environmental protections of Law 1382 of 2010 that amended the Mining Code to formalize the implicit environmental protections of the Constitution of 1991, the Committee began formally organizing against the mine. They coordinated collective protest actions and most importantly, had major impact on the media in generating public outrage against the project. The organizing culminated in mobilizing several increasingly large marches, the last of which neared 100,000 people. The protesters demanded their rights to safe (and sufficient), cyanide-free water be protected by the state. Many of those urban residents involved in the protests had not previously been politically active. Their identities had been transformed by contesting the environmental management regime that would allow the contamination of not only the materiality of their water sources, but their collective relationship to water as a public good and its symbolic significance to the vitality of life itself. Santander residents viewed the threat the Canadian company posed to their water supply as an affront, not only to public health and natural patrimony, but also to the very terms of their citizenship. Their outrage was directed toward regional and local authorities ready to favor transnational capital over the citizens they claimed to represent.
I interviewed many members of the Committee, including several environmentalists with specialties in páramo ecosystems; the president of a local Chamber of Commerce who was instrumental in leveraging support from the business community in Bucaramanga against mining operations in Santurbán Páramo; and the former director of the Bucaramanga Water Department who played a vital role in alerting the community to the dangers of mining in the páramos for urban residents as well as putting aside difficulties with the Water Worker’s Union to work against the mine.
The Committee’s success in halting mining operations until now may lie in its striking and rare composition: it draws together not only academics, environmentalists, student groups and social activists that have previously campaigned for the “human right to water,” but also members of the elite class. Even during my interviews, some of the polemic political bias and stigmatizations against fellow members of the Committee were evident. However, the group has, and continues to work hard to put aside differences based on class and political ideologies in order to achieve their goals.
Human Rights, Sustainable Development and Water Sovereignty
In the context of land use planning, the Committee for the Defense of the Water and Santurbán offers a concrete and compelling example that validates the importance of massive community mobilization in pressuring government to halt mining and its corrosive effects. In coming years and decades, as climate change exacerbates not only the shrinking of vital páramo lands but also the already harmful and historic situations of internal displacement and civilian casualties, local peoples’ relationship with their environments become more precarious. As communities’ traditions and public health are increasingly threatened, they turn to human rights to frame their grievances. Colombia may not suffer the massacres and mass killings of previous decades, but the institutions and discourse of human rights that responded to that era may not be sufficient in addressing ongoing economic inequalities and harms to the environment. Nor are the wounds of previous decades able to heal in the context of continued selective killings, forced displacement and social intimidation by both state, para-state and insurgent actors, largely linked to transnational natural resource extraction projects.
As with the case of other regions in the Global South, a narrow focus on human rights and atrocity-based analysis, in many ways enables the larger picture of economic violence to be overlooked. All sides in a conflict can be reproached as human rights violators, just as all sides are able to adopt pro-human rights rhetoric. In this context, land-grabs by mining corporations and devastating effects on lives, livelihoods and environments remain out of official discourses (Roy 2012). By focusing on the obligations of states, the contemporary human rights establishment is largely ineffective at mitigating human rights violations by corporations. Furthermore, human rights stress economic liberty, which in practice results in individual appropriation of and control over economic resources at the expense of equality of access and wellbeing. (Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay 2008) Land, water and other natural resources are not seen as collective holdings, but rather as commodities.
An human rights discourse and praxis, then, must be willing to broaden its scope of analysis to account for environmental abuses, state-facilitated corporate land appropriation and land-use consultation processes and planning regimes that render local people objects of management rather than subjects with rights (Escobar 1995). Similarly “sustainable development” discourse and practice would promote true water and food security and sovereignty, while challenging the idea of progress that equates development (rhetorically “sustainable” or not) with unlimited economic growth. The Committee for the Defense of the Water and Santurbán challenges the neoliberal development model as it contests the notion that Corporate Social Responsibility is a sufficient response for mitigating affronts to collective rights and the environment.
References
Charvet, John, and Elisa Kaczynska-Nay (2008) The liberal project and human rights: the theory and practice of a new world order. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Escobar, Arturo (1995). Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Fierro, Julio (2012) Políticas mineras en Colombia. Bogotá: Instituto Latinoamericano para una sociedad y un derecho alternativos.
Garay Salamanca, Luis Jorge (2013) Minería en Colombia: Fundamentos para superar el modelo extractivista. Contraloría General de la Republica de Colombia
Roy, Arudhati (2012) Capitalism: A Ghost-Story. Outlook India On-line.
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