Amanda recently graduated with a dual M.A. in Latin American Studies and Community and Regional Planning.
This research was made possible in part by funding from the Latin American & Iberian Institute and a Tinker
Foundation Field Research Grant (FRG). For more information about the FRG, please visit the LAII website.
Photograph courtesy of Amanda Hooker.
During the summer of 2014, with funding awarded by the Latin American and Iberian Institute, I traveled to Bogotá and Bucaramanga for 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 mine site, property of a Canadian company, 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 Committee for the Defense of Water and Santurbán Páramo is a coalition of individuals and organizations across a broad political and socioeconomic 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.
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 (Fierro 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).
Mining and Santurbán Páramo
The mining concession solicited by the Canadian mining company lies deep in the eastern Colombian Andes. The company sought permission from the Colombian Government to mine for gold and silver in the mountain system known as Santurbán. 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 seven 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, the company withdrew its original project plan of an open-pit gold mine, while being concurrently denied its license by the Ministry of the Environment. The company 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, the company changed its name 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. The company 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.
The mining company 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. In 2012, the departmental environmental authority demarcated boundaries that left 90% of the company’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. In late 2014, the National Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development coincided with the regionally demarcated boundary, which, again, allowed the company’s mine site to remain.
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. The Canadian 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.
However, my research revealed that the indignation aimed at the multinational mine, did not account for the needs of the rural residents—the campesinos and small-scale miners that live in the páramo. In fact, in some ways, urban bias actually seemed to be limiting better alternative livelihood options for páramo residents.
In contrast, the influence of the mining multinationals to shape material, economic, and social life in the páramo was evident. Given the historic lack of state investment in the region, the mining multinational uses material and symbolic means to conflate the historic importance of small-scale mining to townspeople’s traditions and cultural identity with large-scale corporate mining. The result is a sizable contingency of Páramo residents and civil authorities that affirm the multinational’s presence. However, the leader of a mining cooperative told me that in recent history, the company was at fault for the worst problems of the area. When the company arrived in the mid 90s, it attracted guerilla groups. Then the army came to protect the multinational from the guerilla. Then, and as usual, the ensuing conflict brought harm to the residents. Furthermore, the participant told me that it wasn’t true that the residents in the area had always only been miners. She told me, “20 years ago we mainly survived by planting potatoes. But it is hard for people to go back to potatoes after they get used to gold.”
Possible alternatives
Currently a working group is putting forth alternative development options. It is led by the Governor’s office, along with the UNDP, a local environmental NGO, and mayors from the páramo towns. Their stated goal is to design and execute sustainable “life options” for the resident of the páramos. Currently, their working plan is laid out in a document called the “roadmap.” It aims to promote a “culture of sustainability” among páramo residents through education, payments for ecological services, and other productive alternatives to mining and farming like ecotourism” (“Hoja de Ruta” 2014). Tasked with finding ways to preserve the páramo, the mandate of the Working Group is to work toward what they define as the “general economic interest” of those who live in the páramo. Going forward, it will be interesting to see if the strategies of this alternative governance space are able to incorporate community voice, local knowledge, along with the requisite level of oversight to offer feasible alternatives to residents.
Sustainable Development and Water Sovereignty
Increasingly, human rights discourse is used to frame access to water, land and food. As such, sustainable development praxis must consider alternatives to 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 urban movement in Bucaramanga continues to challenge the neoliberal development model and the notion that Corporate Social Responsibility is a sufficient response for mitigating affronts to the environment. As the movement continues its work, some actors work to build dialogue and alternative livelihoods that protect páramo residents as the vital forces of conservation that they are and with more options can grow to be.
In Santurbán, anti-mining protest alone may not go far enough in addressing the social complexity that arises between the resource curse and environmental protection, especially in a zone of conflict. Some hope remains in the fact that the government hasn’t yet granted the mining company its extractive license. If páramo residents joined in resisting the mine, the Mining Ministry would be less able to justify the company’s presence, and without that and given the visibility of this case, the Environmental Ministry may feel more pressure not to grant the extractive license. However, there is a long way to go in breaking down the urban/rural divide in this case. Though everyone can agree on the importance of water, it will be nearly impossible for páramo residents to join a movement that is hostile toward them.
References
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